Language Imperialism

I think the first thing I began to think about while on this Europe trip was language. This is the first time in my life where I’m in a place where my language is not the primary language. (Okay, Israel falls into that category, but I travelled with a group, so I was very insulated from the experience of not knowing the dominant language(s).) My first realization was how alienating it is to be in a place where you can’t communicate freely with anyone. Even my Airbnb hosts, who “speak English,” speak a different language than I—there are so many colloquialisms that I have to adjust in order to communicate. It opened my eyes to how hostile it is when Americans say, “Learn English before you come here!” If we want to uphold that mantra, should we in turn not be allowed to travel to places unless we know the official tongue? Perhaps that should be another airport screening measure.

I learned on this trip that buried inside me, I had what I will now call “language imperialism.” As mentioned, my hosts “spoke English,” but a different English than mine. But is their English wrong? They, as well as millions or billions of others around the world, learned English in school, likely from instructors who have the same accents and idioms that their form of English has. These accents and idioms were therefore inherited in their version of English, just as my accent and idioms were inherited in my version of English. Therefore, who is to say that my American English is the gold standard of what the English language is? And why, by having this implicit bias, did I not apply the same standard to British English? British English is just as varied from my American English as German English, or Swiss English, or Danish English, or Indian English. So I give the title “language imperialism” to the ideology that assumes that my home language is the “correct” form of the language.

There were several times on the trip where I considered filtering my English through a European accent so that I would not be so easily identifiable as an American. I can’t tell if that’s offensive or not.