I once knew an Englishman who lived abroad. This was before the current trend among the English to flee their own country because of the political, economical and cultural state their country is in. This Englishman had married a foreign woman and left England to live with her in her country (which is my country, too, as it happens). I visited him now and then, always happy for an opportunity to speak English with a native. But every time he disappointed me. He insisted on emulating the pidgin English common among the natives in the country where he now lived. I hoped to inspire him with my very best British-English accent. “Please,” I pleaded, “speak proper English, I would so much like to hear it!” To no avail. “Sorry, I can’t, I don’t know why!” he responded in his stupid pidgin English. How absurd, I thought. Here is a foreigner doing his utmost to sound English while the only Englishman present is doing his utmost to sound foreign. But at the time I could not explain his unwillingness.
Maybe it has got something to do with the fact that English is, and has been for a long time, the world’s lingua franca. This means that an Englishman cannot avoid having his language tortured and distorted every day, in writing or in speaking. It is molested by people from all over the world who are unable to appreciate or could not care less about the extraordinary musicality, the finer conceptual distinctions or the subtle idiomatic flavours of the English language. And although it is true that many native speakers are also less than linguistically adept I wonder how it affects the pride of the nation to have its mother tongue permanently and ubiquitously mispronounced, misspelled, misunderstood – and, indeed, understood – by strangers who have no, or at any rate very few, personal ties to and hence little personal interest in the English language and its territorial foundations: English history, culture, customs and traditions. For the strangers the language is merely a convenient tool for easy cross-cultural communication. A tool wholly detached from its national bedrock.
It is almost as if anyone suddenly had a right to rule over my child. No doubt I would feel uneasy and hostile to the intruders. Sooner or later my feelings would find an outlet: I would tell them to go away. Or if I am not up to the confrontation I would seek to protect my child by withdrawing it. I would take the child to a secret hiding place where only I and my close relatives had access. But then I face a dilemma: I cannot isolate the child for the rest of its life but on the other hand I cannot expose it to the outer world where total strangers will readily dominate and contaminate it. Not quite knowing how to solve this dilemma I continue to keep the child in hiding whilst making an effort to integrate as seamlessly as I can with the outer, foreign world in the hope that this gesture will divert the attention from the fact not only that I have a most precious child tucked away but also that I consider the influence of this foreign, disrespectful world on my child as dangerous and detrimental.
My English friend, I believe, had such a precious child hidden away, namely his dear mother tongue. For fear of hurting it he sheltered it from foreign disrespectful and prying impulses. And he tried to cover it all up by adopting the pidgin language of his foreign companions. I suppose this is the price to pay for the sensitive person whose language happens to be the lingua franca of the world. At some deeper (not necessarily conceptual) level he realises that language is inextricably linked with national background, heritage and culture and cannot be shared with total strangers save in the most superficial sense. Not wanting to be superficial he conceals from the light that which he knows cannot bear the exposure rather than displaying something that cannot be genuine and true.
