Cute, but Let's Switch to English

I have been on holiday to several European countries. Though I find holidays decadent and idle, it has been a rewarding experience. That said, I am bad at holidaying. I don’t buy tickets to venues, I don’t book events, and I generally wander around to see what happens, instead of looking up what to do. I also carry a secret shame: I am ashamed to speak English in a non-English country. For me, it seems rude to turn up to a country and not speak the national language. It is the same as turning up to a BBQ without any drinks to offer the host or meat to throw on the grill.

From reddit, original source unknown

I am not the only one with this secret lingual shame. In Anglophone countries, a minority of us bear the shame of monolingualism. We seek ways to redeem this original sin. The rest are well-adjusted people. We the Ashamed power through French, German, and Spanish courses on Duolingo. If truly motivated, we book classes with a language school. And each of us ends up developing a nuanced system of self-study using books, podcasts, and TV shows. Learning a language is one hell of an endeavour, and few pull it off. But for those who absolve themselves of monolingual sin, it is rewarding. Shame turns to pride.

For my holiday, I elected, at the suggestion of my sister, to go to Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnia and Herzegovina refers to one country, by the way. These and other former Yugoslav republics speak a common language. It is hard to name, but we sometimes call it Serbo-Croatian. Croatia calls their dialect Croatian while Bosnia and Herzegovina calls it Bosnian. I had two weeks planned across the two countries. So months before departure, I resolved to turn up to the door with something in hand. I embarked on a project to learn the Language of the South Slavs.

Their language is one of the strangest I have seen. It is highly inflected. This means the words change endings depending on what they are doing in a sentence. For example, voda means water and časa means glass. Simple enough. But to say glass of water, you combine them as časa vode. See how the -a changed to -e? The -e is there to say the glass contains the quantity of said water. Changing words in this way is called grammatical case. Each noun and adjective in Serbo-Croatian has a fixed gender and can be inflected in any of seven cases. This example may be simple, but you need to memorise all the rules for each gender and case. As well as all the exceptions.

So I tried.

To start my lessons, I checked out a copy of Beginner’s Serbian and got reading. I also booked a weekly lesson with a Serbian teacher called Boko who runs a teaching YouTube channel. I loaded up Anki with hundreds of helpful words and phrases. On nights and weekends, I studied what I could. As a single man, I have time for a lot. But as a single man, I am ever limited. After getting home from work and the gym, the evening would find my body strewn upon the couch. And I would often wave away my own offering of language lessons, in favour of feeding and taking care of myself. When Monday’s 8.30pm language class came around, I did my best to hide my sleepiness from Teacher Boko. Despite my slackery, I pulled something off.

I learnt enough to start.

You don’t need to learn a language completely to travel to another country. Just enough to start the immersion process. If you haven’t heard of immersion, it is where you go to the place that speaks the language and carry on as normal: read signs, watch local television, talk to shopkeepers, play sports, make friends, et cetera. They are all part of immersion. Language teachers have developed an uncountable number of different learning methods. But immersion is proven time and time again to be the most effective. It is simple too - you just need time, money, and the nerve to pack up your life and move to another country.

For me, two weeks was not enough time for immersion to take effect. But it would have been enough time for me to learn a few new things and practise what I had rehearsed. To my disappointment, the first restaurant I went to had a menu in English. Every waiter spoke English. As well as the taxi drivers, hotel receptionists, and each new friend I made on Croatia’s beautiful beaches. No one was there to play language teacher. In Croatia (and I believe Bosnia and Herzegovina), tourism is a major export. But language teaching is not. So I felt the pressure to be like every other tourist and just switch to English. This was no fault of the Croats or Bosnians - they have jobs to do. And I don’t like getting in the way.

English is the language of global commerce, science, pop culture, air traffic control, and thousands of other domains. It’s the world’s lingua franca. A lingua franca is a language that a group of communities adopt in order to trade or facilitate exchange. Different parts of the world have had different linguae francae throughout history. Today, English dominates. And it looks likely to stay that way. With the largest population of English speakers, the US sits at the commercial and cultural epicentre of the world. Powerful networks of technology and commerce maintain their hegemony. Technology amplifies the dominance. Together, technology and capital cannot be stopped.

In capitalism, you must make decisions with a cost-benefit approach. The goal is to maximise profits and lower costs. The Romantic in me decries this sterile machinery of capitalism. O! That we build shopping malls not Cathedrals - monuments to the Dollar, not the Lord Our God! But even a Romantic is price sensitive and time poor. When you have an important train to book, few people want to spend an hour practising a conversation at the train ticket office, covering all possible outcomes. Neither does the ticket office want to deal with a customer stammering out where they want to go. It’s a waste of staff time. Please sir, let’s switch to English.

Capital has inflated a bubble over the world and trapped us inside: the English-speaking bubble. English speakers aren’t the only ones trapped. The bubble has enveloped the camera-happy Chinese tourist, the penny-pinching Dutch caravanner, and the man-stealing French vagabond. After all, a Frenchman might learn English in school - but Serbo-Croatian for a week’s holiday in Croatia? Quelle perte de temps. English is the obvious default. That said, my three international characters get the opportunity to learn English as a second language. But the bubble leaves us native English speakers stuck in first gear. When God saw man building the Tower of Babel, He scattered the people and cursed them to all speak different tongues. Today, a new god curses us with one.

But English should be celebrated for bringing the world together, should it not? The benefits are undeniable. But in the face of undeniable truths, I am ever the contrarian. I know that the bubble takes something from us. Sure, the English-speaking bubble makes my vanity project of learning Serbo-Croatian just a bit harder. But language is not just a tool of communication. It reflects political and social realities. When you learn someone else’s language, you put on their eyeglasses. The more you learn, the more you see. With the English eyeglasses, you can still see what the Other¹ sees. But what you do see will be more blurry, or tinted, or tainted.

Language difficulties make it harder to do business. But challenge is what makes travelling great. Communicating with someone while learning their language is a humbling experience. With each incomprehensible word, you closely observe their eyes brighten and brows furrow. You tune your ears to each rise and fall in tone. You both become masterful pantomime performers as you figure out what gestures get your point across. When you’re lucky, you hear a few words come together and click! I understand you now! What started as a nightmare ends when language wakes you up.

Technology companies seek to eradicate language difficulties. Today, YouTube automatically translates the title and content of videos. Note that they translate based on which language they detect, which may not be English. Yet this software reflects technology companies’ desire to eradicate difference. In trying to make videos more accessible to other speakers, YouTube strips nuance that cannot translate. Language is made of such nuance. If successful, auto-translation could remove the need for learning a different language at all. If this happens, the challenge of the different, of the Other, is wholly removed. The tapestry of culture is too messy. Let us bleach it a nice, standard white.

My Serbo-Croatian was not good, and still isn’t. I don’t blame people for not engaging with me. And I don’t blame myself for not learning a whole language for a two-week trip. My efforts to learn did not match my neuroticism. I cannot refute the benefits of the English bubble for my trip. I met some very lovable Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks. Without a common language, I could not have heard their accounts of the Yugoslav wars. Learning this history was very sobering and valuable — more so than knowing how to order coffee.

Does the English-language bubble need to pop? Am I just a neurotic who doesn’t know how to holiday properly? Even if I had something to fight against, it wouldn’t be a fair cause. To speak English is a choice people are free to make. It would be unfair for a few overzealous language enthusiasts to demand change. But the fight can be quiet. He or she who reads through a language book does their part. So does the Duolingo user, when they complete the course. When they’re ready, the diligent soul has a counter to Cute, but let’s switch to English:

Not yet, let’s continue with yours.

¹ The Other is a concept that Byung Chul Han discusses in his book The Expulsion of the Other and other works.