Naming Languages

What Language do you Speak?*

On the face of it, this might seem to be a simple question and the answer is probably clear in your mind — it is the language you were born into, spoken through all those months while you grew and developed in your mother's womb. Not a conscious learning, nor possibly anything specifically related to the genes that had formed you, but still a comfortable sense of familiarity during the days after birth — those frightening days of realisation that the protective cocoon was no longer shielding you from the reality that abounded.

Yet as you grew, so did the interpretation of that language — the way it was used, shaped by those around you and their own understanding of your growth, filtered through the limited knowledge they carried of their own life's experience.

Fogy is reminded here and now that it has been some time since his speculative reasoning has surfaced and may not be so easily recognised — so bear with him.

Life's experience is where your ancestors and the more elderly members of your family may not have actually spoken your language in the way you came to know it — and here Fogy is talking about immigrants, asylum seekers, victims of upheaval in its various forms, who were thrust headfirst into adaptation without the privilege of the soft introduction a baby is afforded.

And the crux of the matter is exactly this. Language is a living entity in itself. What was born from a solid root of well-structured framework is constantly being carved into a reminiscence of itself, absorbing other influences, forced toward simplicity so that its very essence — communication — can continue.

Coming to Brazil and being faced with the uphill task of learning Portuguese, it quickly became apparent to Fogy that while completely different from his native English, there were still enough similarities to make deductive interpretation possible. While understanding came more easily, reproducing the language remained ever more elusive.

Then came the realisation that the more consistent rules and structures Fogy was familiar with had been gradually whittled from the original Portuguese — meaning that the language being spoken in Brazil was in many ways a modified subset of its European ancestor.

Over time, and after considerable criticism of American English, it became equally apparent that American English has undergone many similar transitions — simplifying a number of inconsistencies in the original while incorporating the languages of its many peoples and their origins. This inclusion has enriched the base language and expanded the breadth of its possible meanings. As an international reference, it has stepped well beyond the limitations imposed by more traditional forms.

But is it really English? And is Brazilian Portuguese really Portuguese?

Fogy would suggest the proper answer is NO — a very definite NO.

Americans have changed their language sufficiently that we should really be speaking of them as speaking American. Australians speaking Australian. New Zealanders, New Zealand. Jamaicans, Jamaican. The list continues as we begin to detect the great differences across similar usages of a single dialect — to the point where the question Do you speak English? might honestly be answered with: No, I speak — and here we might choose from any of the above, or any other variant that is rooted in but has grown well beyond the original.

Those from South America visiting Spain might well ask — what Spanish is this? It feels so different from the Spanish of Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Chile.

So — do you speak Portuguese or Brazilian? English or American? Spanish or Cuban?

Fogy believes we genuinely need to reconsider the overall designation of language — to allow the richer definition of origin to stand as legitimate linguistic recognition in its own right.

And perhaps, in doing so, we might also recognise that the people who shaped those languages deserve the same.

Cheers.

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