Throughout my time navigating various online forums and scrolling through posts from users around the world, I’ve noticed a humorous yet surprisingly poignant pattern: non-native speakers of English, despite possessing extensive vocabularies and flawless syntax, will often begin their writing with a sheepish apology for any mistakes that may follow. This unwarranted humility of “apologies for my poor English” stands in stark contrast against the unapologetic and informal language wielded by native English speakers, a difference in attitude that is near baffling.
As someone that had the good fortune of being born and raised with an “universal language”, I have come to realize that I often take my position for granted. When looking for a new novel to delve into, I will not be faced with a lack of translated versions in my language, nor will I ever consider that a favorite work of mine may never reach an international audience due to the structural complexity and cultural significance of the language it was written in. Fundamentally, the volume of educational resources available to me, an English-speaking student, may outweigh what students that speak a less global language are able to access. I can comfortably converse with people from almost anywhere online, and I do not perceive the same pressure in this country to be bilingually literate and fluent: never will my ability or intelligence here be evaluated based on the years of Spanish I took in school or my simple Mandarin. These are all privileges that I need to acknowledge as the presence of English in both academia and culture grow stronger.
In The Fall of Language in the Age of English, Minae Mizamura makes the compelling point that English’s status as an increasingly ubiquitous universal language can have dire consequences for national literature and academia. She argues that the survival of the former hinges upon preservation of native language's diversity itself. Chapter 6, “English and National Languages in the Internet Age”, contains a particularly memorable passage in which Mizamura, critical of Kevin Kelly’s idealist views toward the logistics of a universal language library, becomes “astounded by the naivete of someone highly intelligent whose mother tongue is English - someone who is not condemned to reflect on language”. There is so much to unpack here in this sentence, but most importantly, it is a sobering wake-up call emphasizing the extent to which English has permeated every aspect of modern society: I see now that I must reflect on how my linguistic advantage—accidentally curated through history and constructed by context—plays a role in the erasure brought forth by globalization. Perhaps I should be the one apologizing; after all, it is my responsibility to understand and empathize with how non-native speakers interact with English.