Is language important enough to fight about?

15 December 2005

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The idea of fighting over language might seem strange, but it's all too common. Like religion, language can move people to take up arms against those who have a different one. That's because language is such an important part of identity.

We tend to think there's a one-to-one correspondence between language and nation: in France they speak French, in Japan they speak Japanese, and so on. But worldwide there are close to 7,000 languages -- and only about 200 nations. That means a lot of multilingual nations! And since languages tend to coincide with ethnic groups, that means a lot of multi-ethnic nations as well. India and Nigeria, for example, each have about 400 different languages and ethnic groups.

In many parts of the world, people from different language backgrounds interact on a daily basis. On the whole, things go smoothly enough. But sometimes tensions arise -- especially when one group feels threatened or oppressed by another.

Look at Canada, normally a pretty peaceful place -- except when it comes to language. Canada as a whole is officially bilingual, but most French-speaking Canadians live in the province of Quebec. Surrounded by English-speakers, they often feel that their language and culture are threatened.

In 1977, French-speakers in Quebec tried to protect their language by passing a law that in many ways restricted the use of English. For example, it required all signs in public places to be in French, and French alone. Well, it caused a lot of resentment among the English-speakers -- including small business-owners like Allan Singer. For years, he had run his modest shop beneath a simple hand painted sign that read "Allan Singer Limited -- Printers and Stationers." Under the new law, his sign became illegal -- he would have to replace it with a sign in French.

Well, Mr. Singer refused to do that -- and took his case all the way to Canada's Supreme Court. The court ruled that Quebec's law could require a business owner to use French in his sign. But the law could not force him to use French only, to the exclusion of English -- or of Spanish, or Chinese, or any other language that he might also wish to use. Ultimately, this brouhaha over signs gave Canada an opportunity to reaffirm its commitment to protecting the language rights of all its citizens. But the underlying tensions haven't gone away. On two occasions -- in 1980 and 1995 -- the citizens of Quebec even went to the polls to vote on whether the province should secede from Canada, and become an independent French-speaking nation. It didn't happen -- but the 1995 vote was awfully close, with a margin of less than one percent.

Conflicts over language sometimes escalate into riots and even full-scale wars. Language played a major role in the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971. What began as a Bengali language movement turned into a nine-month war for Bengali independence in which more than three million people died.

You've probably seen news reports about Sri Lanka, where language is at the heart of an ongoing conflict. A group called the Tamil Tigers -- speakers of the Tamil language -- have been rebelling for decades against a Sinhalese-speaking majority. And in Spain, the Basque separatist group ETA has used acts of terrorism in pursuing its goal of an independent Basque homeland … where Basque would be the national language.

In these and other conflicts, there's a lot more at stake than language. The language we speak is part of who we are. It gives us a powerful sense of belonging with those who speak like us, and an equally powerful sense of difference from those who don't. Little wonder, then, that when someone attacks our language -- or even just our accent -- we feel that we are being attacked. And we respond accordingly. Discriminate against a language, and you discriminate against its speakers; disrespect my language, and you disrespect me.

That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from Paul B. Garrett, Assistant Professor of Linguistic Anthropology at Temple University. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. Visit us at www.cofc.edu/linguist. And keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.