The English Language and self loathing.

As a reasonably avid user of the internet, on most days I will click onto one or more sites where people from around the world are sharing knowledge.

Which is good.

A lot of people sharing information in entomology, which is one of the many areas I follow with some interest but little know-how, are from Europe or America, possibly because my site-sampling is biased that way, but probably because the history of modern zoology is European.

This point is irrelevant.

The real point is that a majority of authorities whose words I read and occasionally respond to are not first-language English speakers, and I feel like a British tourist abroad. I carry on as I am, and assume that if I do so with enough force an volume, it will continue to work.

I can only assume that the tower of Babel was actually built in Britain. All over the web, other people use a language they don't speak to help me understand, and at least once a week, I write to people whose first language I know not to be English, and yet the very idea of writing to them in their own language seems laughable as soon as I think it.

I use all the usual excuses, of course - English is so much more convenient for everyone, English is spoken worldwide, if you go anywhere in the world and speak dutch, and to the same places and speak English, you're more likely to get your idea across in English - but all of these basically come down to the fact that the UK in general - and England in particular - has forgotten that it doesn't rule the world any more. We English are like the racist old relative in the corner of the room, who offends every thirty seconds but is harmless and a little bit pathetic and so eventually you don't even try to point it out.

It gets worse.


I found myself wanting to write back to a professor in Poland the other day because his grammar was non-standard.

Auf wiedersehen, Au revoir, Arrivederci, Żegnaj, Vaarwel, ffarwel, na shledanou, Adios, hüvasti

And Smivel.