Tony Crowley's disgusting Wars of Words

I happened to cast a glance at the book "Wars of Words: The Politics of Language in Ireland 1537–2004" (Oxford University Press 2005) by Tony Crowley.

The first section of the book is titled "Introduction: Language Acquisition" which begins with someone's vague statement about the notion of language purity having something to do with racial stereotypes. This begs two questions:

1. What has language purity got to do with language acquisition?

2. What has language purity got to do with the topic of the book?

I mean, this book isn't about the Académie Française. It's about the policies of the English invaders in Ireland which (as not even the most shameless history falsifier can deny) resulted in the Irish language going almost extinct.

It would seem that with the above-mentioned citation, the author strives to set the emotional tone for the following discussion. Before he has presented even one fact, even one thought of his own, he suggests to the readers' subconcious the idea that opposition to the destruction of the Irish language can be viewed as a pursuit to keep the Irish "race" clean of anyone and anything that is not "pure" enough – in contrast to the noble willingness of the open-minded English to lovingly welcome all human beings in the world as their servants.

Indeed, before the end of the very first page, Mr. Crowley exposes himself as a pathological ethnic nihilist who can't even begin to understand the role of the language and its unique importance for human beings:

"For example, in what was for a long time a standard account of the issue, ‘The Spoken Languages of Medieval Ireland’, Ireland’s leading early twentieth-century historian declared baldly that ‘the native cause had always been identical in the minds of the Gaelic race with the Irish language’ (Curtis 1919: 252). There is in fact little if any evidence for this linkage between language and ‘the native cause’; the claim is quite anachronistic, although the political implications of such a relationship for understanding national identity at the time the claim was made (pre-independence) were clear. Pride in a language, and by corollary defensiveness about a language, occur usually in contexts of cultural and political threat and danger, [---]"

Reading such haughty imperialist nonsense, one feels like asking if the writer is even sane. "There is little evidence" that being able to talk to someone creates in a human being the feeling he has more in common with that person than with someone he can't talk to? And note how Mr. Crowley drops emotionally loaded phrases such as "pride in a language", "defensiveness", "threat and danger" into the text, thereby subtly (because he isn't man enough to say straight what he thinks) implanting in the reader's mind the ideas that 1) when people want to preserve their native language rather than switch to English, it is because they irrationally believe that their native language is somehow better, and 2) those who oppose the British Empire's policy of linguistic genocide in Ireland are cowards.

Note also, how Mr. Crowley quoted the book from the early 20th century word by word without considering it necessary to inform his readers that in that time the term "ethnicity" was relatively unknown and it was common to use the word "race" in its stead. I have little doubt that Mr. Crowley relishes the joy of subtly leading his readers to thinking that the people who condemn the linguistic genocide in English-ruled Ireland are to be set equal to those who hate people because of their different skin color – while he has chosen his wording in such a way that he'll be able to swear in the name of all gods that he had never anything like that in mind.

And, as I'd like to remind you once more – this is the very first page of the book's actual text. (I mean, after the impressum and the copyright notice and the acknowledgements and such.)

Of course, we can be sure Mr. Crowley is not insane, just English. A native speaker of the world language, he just can't understand why are all those aborigines so stubbornly clinging to their native languages and won't realize how easier life would be if everyone in the world just learned Tony Crowley's native language.

I saw no point in continuing to read this condescending "study" which, apart from being written in a vague language with very little informational content, apparently attempts to analyze the reasons for the poor misguided Irish people's defensiveness caused by the imagined threat from the English, the fear of which the master race hasn't unfortunately been able to cure in spite of centuries of benevolent efforts.

No, we don't have to switch to your language!

A long time ago when I lived several years in Western Europe, I learned (among many other things) that people there are taught that when you're in a conversation with people and someone joins the group who doesn't understand your native language, it's considered impolite to continue speaking in that language. You will have to switch to the language the newcomer can understand – even when you're saying something to another person that doesn't concern the newcomer.

By today, that nonsense has already spread to my country too. In the olden days when Estonia was ruled by the Russians, one occasionally heard stories about Russians whinging about the Estonians continuing to speak Estonian in their presence (although personally I never had such an experience), but we couldn't care less about what the Russians liked or disliked. However, when a suggestion comes from the north or the west, most Estonians are only too eager to adjust their behaviour in accordance with it, hoping thereby to become more "European". Lacking national pride (furiously hate Russians as they may), they fail to realize this "politeness" is simply a cover for the imperialist nations' habit for treating the members of smaller nations as their inferiors. The overwhelming majority of native speakers of major world languages such as English, Spanish and Russian hold it for self-evident that they don't have to bother studying foreign languages – everyone else have to study theirs.

In the book "Oracle Bones" by Peter Hessler (an excellent book, by the way, heartily recommended), the author explains how the so-called Chinese language consists in fact of several "dialects" which are mutually unintelligible and could, from the linguistical point of view, be considered separate languages, were it not that they all share a common written language standard. In Mr. Hessler's words, the situation in many regions in China is like if the English would have to learn Dutch in order to be able to write.

Now, that's a brilliant analogy to make the language situation in China easier to grasp for the foreigners. Surely every native English speaker can imagine how horrible it would be if it were impossible to write in English and they'd have to learn Dutch and do all their writing in it, for their lives long.

However, had Mr. Hessler put it the other way around: "the Dutch would have to learn English in order to be able to write", I'm sure it would have left many of his readers raising their eyebrows and asking: "Something wrong with that?"

Seriously, have you ever seen an English-language movie where an Englishman tells the members of his family: since we have a guest from (for example) France, we shall all speak French with each other in order to be considerate of our guest? Even one? I don't think so. It's always the foreigners who make it a point of speaking English for their English guest's sake, who (of course) doesn't speak the local language and never would. Foreign guests in England always speak English. They just do.

Of course, one reason to that is simply to spare the viewers the inconvenience of listening to foreign speech and reading subtitles. It's practical. However, it also reflects the prevailing attitude in the English-speaking world. Like that British couple's story who have been going to vacation in the same sea resort in Spain year after year, often buying fruits in that little shop on the corner, and they tell their friends dismayedly how the foreigners are so impolite: "Can you imagine that it's four summers already that we've been going there, and the shop personnel still hasn't bothered to learn English!"

Or look at that American guy who contacted me after a discussion about Russia on a travel forum some years ago. He asked me recommendations on what to see in Moscow. When I, after giving him some tips, also recommended he learn to read the Russian characters, he casually brushed if off on the grounds that he hadn't needed the local alphabet in any country he had ever been. I just can't believe that attitude. I know only too well how much you'll miss in Russia when you can't even read the alphabet, let alone speak the language. Yet that English-speaking travel enthusiast wouldn't even consider that for one second. Neither did I see any point in wasting my time trying to convince that supremacist jerk.

To cut the long story short – may I suggest you shut up with your sanctimonious rhetorics about being polite and speaking the language everyone can understand, because what you really mean is you expect other people to speak your native language, never the other way around. By the virtue of your utter lack of respect for other ethnic groups, you believe to be in the right of demanding that their members make your life easier, while you have no obligations towards them apart from benevolently acknowledging their efforts to master the divine language of yours which'll take them a step closer to becoming proper human beings.

Logically, more knowledge should result in more choice, more freedom, more power. It seems to be different in the English-speaking world – the lazy and stupid hold themselves for superior and think that the industrious and smart have to serve them. He who has made the effort of studying foreign languages is expected to be considerate of the bastard who wouldn't. That's rubbish.

Remember: if you are too haughty to bother studying foreign languages, it doesn't create an obligation for the rest of the humankind to converse in yours just so you can understand them. Your not understanding us is always your problem. Never try to make it our problem. If people around you are talking to each other in a language you don't understand, don't fucking dare to accuse them of impoliteness. Accuse yourself of imperialist arrogance. Take a language corse and make at least a modest effort to contribute your share to our mutual understanding. After you've acquired some basic level in a couple of foreign languages, we can begin to discuss what is polite and what isn't.