Who owns the English language? The answer to this question is no longer as straightforward as “the English”. According to the latest figures from the British Council, English is “spoken at a useful level” by about 1.75 billion people. Counted among this vast anglophone population are not only the hundreds of millions who speak English as a first language, but also the hundreds of millions more who speak it as a second or foreign language in different parts of the world.
English spread across the globe largely as a result of imperialism, as the language was imposed on colonies in Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas. When these former colonies achieved independence, many chose to retain the use of English, usually to function as a primary working language and neutral medium of communication for their diverse populations. As countries such as India, Nigeria, South Africa, Jamaica and Singapore adopted English as a language, they also adapted it – making significant changes to its pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, and giving rise to new varieties now collectively known as World Englishes.
Today, the predominance of English as a language of science, technology, business, diplomacy and entertainment has given many people around the world a strong incentive to acquire the language. From Brazil to South Korea, Spain to Indonesia, millions of people are learning English, and they too are making their own mark on its development.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has documented many of the words that these new communities of English speakers have added to the vocabulary. Many of these words are borrowings from other languages with which English is in constant contact, such as lepak (to loiter aimlessly) from Malay, deurmekaar (confused, muddled) from Afrikaans, kaveera (a plastic bag) from Luganda, and whāngai (an adopted child and the adoption itself) from Māori, which may be unfamiliar to British English speakers but are words characteristic of Malaysian English, South African English, Ugandan English and New Zealand English respectively.
Speakers of world varieties of English are remaking its vocabulary to better express their identities, cultures and everyday realities. In Hong Kong, people exclaim add oil as a show of encouragement or support, an expression literally translated from the Cantonese gā yáu, with reference to petrol being injected into an engine. In the Philippines, many houses have a dirty kitchen, which is not actually a kitchen that is dirty in the sense you think, but a kitchen outside the house where most of the real cooking is done – a necessary convenience in a tropical country where it is best to avoid trapping heat and smells indoors. In Nigeria, a mama put is a street-food stall, and its name comes from the way that its customers usually order food: they say “Mama, put …” to the woman running the stall, and point to the dish they want so it can be put on their plate.
Meanwhile, the Japanese have invented, and South Koreans have popularised, the word skinship, a blend of the words skin and kinship that refers to the close physical contact between parent and child or between lovers or friends.
In Oxford University Press’s Gift of Words campaign this year, we have asked people who speak more than one language to “gift” a word from their first to their second language, and vice versa. The responses we have so far received highlight even more words that multilingual English speakers felt they had to borrow from their other languages for lack of a direct equivalent in English: words such as saudade (nostalgic longing) from Portuguese, gezellig (a sense of cosiness and togetherness) from Dutch, nomakanjani (come what may) from isiZulu, and apapacho (affection, comfort) from Nahuatl by way of Spanish.
Calling these borrowed words “gifts” is an important reframing, as many value language purity over diversity and consider external influences a threat to the integrity of a language. But this is in contradiction to how language works, as the borrowing of words is part of the natural evolution of all living languages. English is particularly notable for its ability to absorb elements from other languages, and the previously mentioned loan words join a host of others that English borrowed from Old Norse, Norman French, Latin and Ancient Greek much earlier in its history, including core words such as egg, fashion, universe and economy.
Contrary to popular belief, it is multilingualism rather than monolingualism that is the norm, with various reports estimating that between 60% and 75% of the global population can speak more than one language. And in such a multilingual, digitally interconnected world, where more and more people are brought together by shared interests and goals rather than just geographic proximity, the interchange of words between languages and cultures has accelerated.
Changing our attitudes towards multilingualism and language variation is vital to fight the linguistic prejudice that causes people to be discriminated against for not using the “right” words or for speaking in the “wrong” accent. Despite all that they have contributed to the enrichment of English, many speakers of varieties other than standard British or American English still find themselves being mocked or losing out on educational or professional opportunities as they are effectively denied the right to use their own language in the way that they want.
It is only when we share ownership of English, and embrace the language in all its diversity, that it can truly be a gift that everyone can benefit from.
Danica Salazar is a lexicographer at Oxford Languages, where she leads editorial projects on world varieties of English
