English as an Alibi

Lots of people in Europe speak English, but what is really fascinating is why they do so. On the surface, they all learn English so that they can participate in the global economy, the internet, English pop culture, American science, you name it.

Still, behind the obvious rational reasons, lie others: The desire to preserve their own culture. A paradox, learn English so that you don't have to give up your native tongue. This is a deal that small religious groups have long had--the worldly language, the private language and the sacred language. Secular Europe has the first two.

So every worldly Dutchman learns English, but never with the thought of abandoning his native tongue. Indeed, the bond is stronger than ever. Learning English does not make Europeans less nationalistic, it allows them to quiet, discretely become more so.

It is easy to pay respect to the global behemoth, who can deny the dominance of English, but then once having done so, Europeans no longer need to learn the many other languages spoken around them.

I remember in the late eighties watching a young Frenchman speaking to a teller in a Frankfurt bank. They both were speaking awkward English to each other about some financial transaction. In another era, the German woman would have spoke some French and the visiting Frenchman some German. But in an English dominated world, they were not compelled to learn each other's language.

Now Europeans can increasingly retreat behind their native languages without imagining that they are speaking to a European audience. The Dutch are speaking only to other Dutch speakers--not to the Brits, the Germans or the French, because they can safely assume that people from those language groups are likely to only have English as their second language.

The first thing to creep back into the picture, then is nationalism, initially aimed against non-European immigrants who speak no English.