Despite its being my mother tongue, I hate English. No, not the class. The language.
Only after I’d really traveled abroad a bit while not bound to a cruise ship’s itinerary did I fully begin to comprehend the breadth of English’s dissemination worldwide. No matter where I went, in cities as different from each other as Cuenca, Ecuador to Jerusalem I found signs advertising English classes on nearly every street corner. I’ve always known that the world has been putting in some serious elbow grease into learning my mother longue for quite some time now, but the accessibility of not only mandatory English instruction in public schools from elementary school onwards, but also the more noticeable supplementary, private instruction took me aback more than expected. It dwarfed the sparse commercial foreign language schools peppered throughout American urban and suburban areas, as well as our own well-meaning but often fruitless foreign language instruction in the public school system. I went to high school right outside of the nation’s capital, yet only two years were required in order to graduate. I was lucky to even be able to take foreign language classes during the height of budget slashing. However, the closest I ever really got to extra-curricular language immersion was the occasional time I mustered up enough courage to order my Chipotle in Spanish. That’s an active use of language, and though opportunities, only exacerbated by my own feebleness, presented themselves relatively rarely, passive opportunities for language absorption proved even more elusive. While my foreign counterparts might have felt just as anxious and apprehensive at the actual construction of understandable language, many of them have been inundated by a myriad of passive English since birth, be it pop culture or advertising slogans. In fact, it’s almost impossible to get away from any facet of American culture while abroad, barring deep in the Congolese jungle or islands floating in the South Pacific solely visited by seabird enthusiasts. Even in the countries most hostile to importation of the Billboard 200, the presence of American commodities, especially cultural ones, is unavoidable. Despite the ever-growing sway conservatives in some pockets of the world fear American pop culture holds over their denizens, English, in particular the learning of it, has remained a solidly neutral and popular endeavor. In North Korea, I was surprised to find out that students there are learning it in droves. Yet it helps to remember that American does not equal English. Speaking it fluently reaps innumerable benefits apart from better understanding Anglophone culture. Though its “imposition” worldwide has partially stemmed from America’s own rise to veritable superpower, its adoption has grown in leaps and bounds due to the sheer practicality of having a common tongue.
A byproduct of English’s supremacy as language of choice worldwide, nonetheless, is that many Americans (and probably Brits, Aussies, as well) have become lackadaisical in their own language learning efforts. We fully comprehend and appreciate the importance placed upon the study of other peoples’ languages, but it’s just so darn easy to resort to English when actually dealing with them. We’re continuously awed by the capability with which many non-natives communicate in it, our own cheeks turning red as we stumble through basic greetings. That, of course, is not to say that they’re all amazingly articulate, but more likely than not those with a college education handle it rather well. Heck, even many a street vendor can direct you to the nearest tourist hotspot. No language is learned to fluency overnight, duh, but English, apart from its aforementioned ubiquity worldwide, is, simply put, easy. Relatively speaking, of course, the grammar is a piece of cake. Minimal conjugation. No gender. No inflections, apart from pronouns. It’s also quite straightforward, as the rules actually allow fewer exceptions than frequently proclaimed. Pronunciation is where its main difficulties lie, but we’re so used to so many different accents that even the poorer ones are, for the most part, comprehensible. English thus outshines any competition when it comes to the lingua franca position. Naturally, we native English speakers are somewhat loath to admit this fact, as most speakers take pride in their native tongue’s complexities and idiosyncrasies, as if somehow speaking a notoriously difficult tongue that others struggle with were a reflection of our intellect, when learning a language is as natural as sticking things in your mouth as a toddler. In fact, for the vast majority of native English speakers, the mere correct use of who and whom immediately showcases one’s level of learning. And to think that in many languages, this type of phenomenon happens with almost every word in a sentence!
A much more measureable byproduct of English’s spread across lands close and far alike is the introduction of Anglicisms in many languages often quite detached from their original meanings and pronunciations. Take, for example, the Korean word “Fighting!” an exclamation used to boost enthusiasm at a sporting event. Many nationalists have bemoaned the infiltration and ostensible subsequent degradation of their beloved tongues, believing that their languages serve as means of ethnic cohesion, to wit, a channel to exclude the other. Language is also resilient, despite efforts au contraire conducted by groups hostile to linguistic diversity on their turf. Nonetheless, English continues to pervade the world’s linguistic nooks and crannies, rendering attempts against its being foisted upon the rest of the world. Yet youths have seemed to adopt English slang with gusto. Then again, there’s always been a certain discordancy between the young and the old, eh? Especially with respect to use of language.
It’s impossible to truly see the magnitude of English’s influence worldwide unless you travel abroad. But once you do, it’s staggering, and it’s immediate. And it sucks. You read it right. It sucks. I feel so transparent abroad. My best friends, my words, that I’d hitherto thought naively as arcane to the foreign ear, suddenly proffered no mystery, but rather cheated on me, dancing gleefully off the tongues of people of all colors. I now knew how some Brits might feel when distancing themselves from the American variant of their language. But I am not of British origin. I am primarily Ashkenazi Jewish. My ancestors spoke Yiddish, a beautiful tongue that quickly vanished in their efforts to assimilate to the American way. The elation that washes over me whenever I can accurately pepper my speech with Yiddish words and expressions is fleeting, and quickly turns into a even more momentary sadness that lasts but a second longer. Yiddish was supposed to have been our secret tongue, yet my ancestors let it die out, rendering me a monolingual bore. There’s no use in wallowing, I scolded myself. After all, English was beautiful in its own right, and more importantly, my language. She’d been there for me the entirety of my life, faithful and tireless, whenever I needed to materialize my thoughts into comprehensible speech, helping me find the perfect combinations of balance and rhythm in my sentences, not to mention the words that form them. And I remained loyal to her, spending countless hours scouring her repertoires of words in my quest to do her justice in my short stories, essays, and even text messages. But when I began realizing how little she really did belong to me, through my travels abroad, that she’d become the world’s tool, and her words, their pawns, I got sad. Then angry. Why had I not been bestowed the same gift of a cultural tongue afforded to so many? I started to resent her, despite her insistence on maintaining an everyday presence in my life. As much as I couldn’t stand her, I had no choice but to turn to her when needing to express myself. I couldn’t stay mad at her for too long, though. I’m not one to harbor rancor. I realized that it’d been through no doing of her own that I felt abandoned. Although she’d initially embraced her diffusion through exotic lands, lured by the potential fame she’d sought out so fervently, I don’t think she had the intention of leaving us, leaving me, high and dry. Yet there’s no turning back now. I’m left to grumble whenever I hear variegated groups of nationals communicating in English together, whenever I see foreign advertising slogans or song titles expressed with my words, whenever I feel commonplace. Hackneyed. A dime a dozen. Though I may be able to craft beautiful prose with her words, and though the breadth of her vocabulary is nothing short of astonishing, she no longer has a culture supporting her, backing her, unifying and solidifying her cultural essence.
Gosh, I sound like such a tool writing as if the entire language of English were my personal possession. Or a her. Please don’t misread me. I don’t mean to disparage this language, but I will nonetheless wholeheartedly concede that if I had been able to choose which language was to be foisted upon my virgin earlobes, I’d have, without no qualm, chosen some obscure tongue, and learned English as everybody else does, perchance somewhat begrudgingly at first but undoubtedly appreciative of the opportunities opened once having mastered this irresistible language.
