Pacific English

One of the reasons I haven’t added to this blog for some time is that I’ve been out of Asia. Now that I’m back I thought I would write an entry about English in the Pacific island nations of Fiji and Tonga. This is slightly off topic, but both have some interesting Asian connections.

Fiji was a British colony from 1874 to 1970. The Union Jack forms part of its flag and Queen Elizabeth appears on its banknotes. Perhaps it is not surprising that most people speak English - but as I have suggested before (e.g. in the April, 2009 entry on the ‘invasion’ of English), the connection between colonialism and language is rarely direct. In the case of Fiji there seem to be several reasons favouring English, some dating to colonial times and others more recent.

The first is that there are two distinct ethnic groups. Nearly 60% are Fijians, who started settling the islands more than 5000 years ago and seem to have come mainly from the Melanesian islands to the west, with others from Tonga and elsewhere in the Pacific. About 40% are Indo-Fijians, descended from Indians brought by the British in the 19th century to develop agriculture. Many Indo-Fijians speak some Fijian, a language sharing common origins with Malay based on the dialect of one of Fiji's smaller islands. But few Fijians speak Fiji-Hindi, the main language of the Indians. This means that English is an important bridge between the two groups.

English is also the main language of education. As in many multilingual developing countries, local languages (i.e. Fijian and Hindi) are limited mostly to the early years of elementary school. Although many secondary schools target different ethnic groups (partly because the Indians tend to be Hindu or Muslim whereas the Fijians are nearly all Christian), both teach mostly in English. It is the language of higher education, with many institutions supported by Australia and New Zealand. Some students go to those two countries to further their studies, and others go to the various campuses of the University of the South Pacific (USP), not only in Fiji but also in other Commonwealth nations in the region.

Alongside sugar, Fiji’s most important industry is tourism, with most visitors coming from Australia and New Zealand. Culturally too, with a national obsession with rugby, the country is closely linked to these countries, and thus to their language.

My main interest in visiting Fiji was to look at the legal system. Given the importance of English in other areas, I was not surprised to find the courts using that language for proceedings. Interestingly, every court had a clerk who was fluent not only in English but also in Fijian and often in Hindi too. I never heard a judge speak any language other than English, and the court clerks were kept busy translating for people who did not understand the language so well.

Tonga has just 100,000 people, making it 10% the size of Fiji, and all of them speak Tongan. Although part of the Commonwealth, it was never formally colonised by Britain and has its own royal family. I therefore expected Tongan, which is the national language, to be more important than English.

In general that is probably true. When I went to the Magistrates Court, for example, proceedings were entirely in Tongan. There are now has many Chinese inhabitants (in a scheme to earn foreign currency, over 4000 have been granted citizenship in the last ten years), and two of the cases I saw involved burglaries on Chinese shops. I was expecting the Chinese witnesses to speak Mandarin or English and was surprised that they spoke quite fluently in Tongan.

I also learned that all laws are published in Tongan (as well as English), and that the national language must be used for debate in parliament. However, as in Fiji, English is very important in education. Many schools are run by international Christian organisations and teach in it. Although the University of the Pacific has a local campus, many people seeking a degree have to go overseas. Most lawyers, for example, study at the USP campus in Vanuatu, while others go to Auckland and Sydney.

Despite the use of Tongan in the lower courts, in the higher courts everything is in English. As far as I could tell, everyone in the courtroom except myself and the judge was from Tonga. But if defendants or witnesses spoke in Tongan, it was translated into English. (On the other hand, not everything spoken in English was translated for their benefit into Tongan.) I was given two reasons. First, every Tongan lawyer and judge has trained in English, so it is considered the language of law, except for the simple cases heard in the lower courts. Indeed the barristers look just like their counterparts in London, with wigs and black gowns – except that they wear sarongs and sandals. The second reason is that nearly all the judges are from Australia or New Zealand. I was told this was to prevent corruption: with only 100,000 people, most locals seem to know each other, and so it might be difficult to ensure impartial decisions without using outsiders.

When I looked at some laws written in Tongan I was impressed by how many local words exist for legal and business terms. On closer reading I noticed that many have been adapted from English to the sounds of Tongan. Examples include: Ateni Seniale (Attorney General), komisiona (commissioner), konisitutone (constitution), holoseila (wholesale), lesisita (registration), laiseni (licensing), peilifi (bailiff) and pisinisi (business).

Bangladesh

In many of the countries frequently mentioned in this blog, English is a practical tool of communication for people with different language backgrounds. India, for example, has hundreds of languages, thirty of them spoken by communities of more than a million people. Although Hindi is widely understood in the north, it is less well-known – and less loved – in the south. English is often the choice for inter-regional communication, and is also favoured by the educated elite. In neighbouring Bangladesh, however, the picture is quite different. Except in a few remote areas, virtually all of its 160 million people speak Bangla/Bengali.

Indeed Bangla, which is also spoken in India and ranks sixth among the world’s languages, was a major reason for the creation of the country. Formed originally into East Pakistan when India was divided into Muslim and Hindu territories at independence in 1947, the Bengali people came to feel isolated and disadvantaged by policies made in more powerful – but less populous – West Pakistan that favoured the Urdu language. Reinforced by economic problems, linguistic nationalism led to a war with the West resulting in the foundation of Bangladesh in 1971. Bengalis remain proud of their language and less than 3% of them speak English. Rabindranath Tagore, who was from over the border in Calcutta but owned land in what is now Bangladesh, was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Although educated in London, he wrote mostly in Bangla.




Despite all this, English has a prominent position in Bangladesh. It is used widely in higher education and law – indeed it is the only language of the higher courts, and lawyers who are poor in English cannot expect to get well-paid work. It is also considered the key to business success. The streets of Dhaka are full of advertisements for English courses.


Why should English be so important even in a country where most people speak the same language and are proud of doing so? Perhaps it is partly because of economics. While conditions have improved greatly in recent years, Bangladesh remains one of the world’s poorest countries. Trading, working and studying overseas are seen as crucial to economic improvement.

Common law – common language?

It is sometimes claimed that English law is the last bastion of British colonialism and of the English language. Long after their countries gained formal independence, lawyers throughout the Commonwealth continue to study laws that evolved centuries ago in England. Many of them still complete their training in London. And all of them require a high level of proficiency in the English language. Because of this, lawyers often have a reputation for trying to preserve ancient privileges and outdated practices. But if we look at the situation of the law in several Asian countries we can see that there are often good reasons for the conservatism of the legal profession. Moreover, it is no easy task to change the language of the law from English to an Asian language.

Most of the Asian countries that inherited English law continue to rely on the English language to administer the law. A great deal of Singapore’s legislation dates from the colonial era; new laws are drafted in English and court proceedings are conducted only in that language, with a centralised system of courtroom interpretation for witnesses and litigants who prefer to use Chinese, Malay, Tamil or other languages. Law in Brunei, which was once a British protectorate, also operates in English, and some of the judges come from Britain.

In the Philippines, a mixture of Spanish and common law is used since the country was a Spanish colony before being occupied by the US more than 100 years ago. But hardly any lawyers use Spanish now. Nor do they use Tagalog, the national language. Almost everything is in English.




However, there are some countries that have tried to introduce another language into the courtrooms. Nearly all cases in Myanmar are now heard in Burmese. In Pakistan, Urdu is commonly spoken in the lower courts (but English remains the language of the constitution, statutes and higher court proceedings). Several state-level courts in India permit Hindi or official regional languages in court. All laws in Hong Kong are written in both English and Chinese, and trials may be in either language. Malaysia started using Malay in its courts in the 1980s, and it is now the main language in the lower courts and in criminal cases. However, English is still used extensively in the higher courts and in civil cases, and even cases conducted in Malay often use a lot of English words.

Since trials are public events, it makes sense for courtrooms to use the language that most people understand best. But changing the language of a legal system is easier said than done. A Hong Kong lawyer who trained in English may not be comfortable speaking Cantonese in court, even if she uses it at home every day. In Malaysia, many laws are yet to be translated into Malay, and so many lawyers feel it is natural to speak English when referring to them. The thousands of previous cases, or precedents, which lawyers base their arguments on all over the Commonwealth and in America may never be translated – there are simply too many of them, and some have been in use for hundreds of years. An attempt to use Tagalog in some courts in the Philippines has had limited success. Not all Filipinos speak Tagalog, and many court clerks and recorders were trained in English and do not have time to retrain.

Some lawyers also worry that by changing the language of the law the meaning of the law will somehow change. After all, even changing the language of old English laws into more modern and simple English is not easy.

Many Asian legal systems have adopted a compromise, adopting both English and a local language. Sri Lanka has a trilingual system of law. In the lower courts, Sinhala or Tamil is used, depending on where the case is held; English is used for the higher courts.

While some common law countries are starting to use more Asian languages, alongside English, one or two countries that never used English in their legal systems are stressing its importance. The Thai government, for example, is encouraging judges to study in English-speaking countries so that they can deal directly with business documents without having to wait for a translation. In Macao, the legal system operates bilingually in Portuguese and Cantonese, but nearly all lawyers are fluent in English. If they weren’t, they could not collaborate with law firms in neighbouring Hong Kong, which is much bigger and richer.