The other imperialists

English is a relative latecomer among the languages brought to Asia by European imperialists. Long before the British or Americans had any bases on the continent, Portuguese traders were active from the Middle East to Japan. By the 17th century their language had become a lingua franca for many Southeast Asian seamen. Portuguese words adopted by Asian languages include almariya (cupboard) and iskolaya (school) in Sinhala, jendela (window) and meja (table)) in Indonesian, and pan (bread) and tabako (tobacco) in Japanese. Some people believe arigato comes from obrigado.

Despite the long colonial influence, however – Macau was the first European colony in Asia (1557) and also the last, returning to Chinese control in 1999 – how many Asians today speak Portuguese? While it continues to be an official language of Macau and remains important in the legal system, Cantonese is far more widely spoken, with 93.4% using it as a first or additional language. Many people in Sri Lanka have Portuguese names, but very few can speak what was once a lingua franca there.

We see a similar situation with other European languages. The Philippines were a Spanish colony for 350 years and both Tagalog and Philippines English are full of loanwords such as fiesta and presidente; yet a mere 2,658 of the 93 million Filipinos use Spanish as a first language. The Dutch, who controlled the East Indies for 400 years, brought numerous everyday words such as hantuk (towel) and kamar (room) to the Indonesian language. We also find many Dutch words in Malay and Sinhala. But very few Indonesians, Malays or Sri Lankans speak the language.

In all the above countries, English is now much more important than European languages that preceded them. Even in Macau, which was never a British colony, over 12% of Macanese claim to speak English, compared to only 2.7% using Portuguese as a first or additional language there. The fate of Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch in Asia seems to suggest that colonisation is not the main reason for the spread of languages. Military alliances and access to jobs and global trade may be more important.

In recent years, some Asian countries have re-emphasised their links with former European occupiers. In August 2007, for example, Philippine President Arroyo announced that Spanish would be reinstated as an official language. But it will be trade with Spain and Latin America rather than government policy that determines whether the language increases in importance.

There was some surprise when Timor Leste chose Portuguese as an official language when it gained independence from Indonesia in 2002. Most of its 220 million speakers are in far-away Europe, Africa and South America, and few Timorese know the language as well as Indonesian or the local lingua franca, Tetum. However, Timor had been a Portuguese colony for 500 years before being invaded by Indonesia, and Portuguese had symbolic importance for groups resisting Indonesian rule. Tetum was considered too underdeveloped to be used exclusively for education and law, and Indonesian is too closely associated with the military occupation. So Portuguese and Tetum were made co-official languages. This complex situation has created a growing unofficial role for English, which many locals hope will help them get jobs with Australian and other international NGOs operating in the country.



In recent decades France has gained a reputation for resisting the global spread of English, promoting French language and culture through L’organisation internationale de la Francophonie, which now has 55 member states. It might therefore be expected that French would have fared better than Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch in former Asian colonies. But it is probably only in Lebanon, in the far west of the continent, that French is as important as English. Although neighbouring Syria was under French rule for as long as Lebanon, it has been less exposed to international business. Few Syrians know any language other than Arabic, but those who do are more likely to speak English than French.

We find similar stories in the region once ruled by France as Indochine. As late as the 1970s most private schools in Laos, and the one public lycée (secondary school) in Vientiane, taught in French, but Lao seems largely to have displaced the language in the public sector and English in the private.


The first wave of Vietnamese escaping communism tended to know French and headed for Paris, but subsequent groups were more interested in the United States and English. In Cambodia, French – and even Russian and Vietnamese – were more important than English until the 1990s, but in recent years Phnom Penh has seen protests by university students against compulsory French classes.

Military exercises

When a friend and I were trekking in Nepal twenty years ago we found very few locals able to speak English, but every so often we would pass someone working in a field with whom we could chat fluently. Usually these were older men who had been Gurkhas – Nepalese soldiers who serve with the British or Indian army.

Under international law the Brigade of Gurkhas are an integral part of the British army, yet only in 2007 were their pensions raised to the value of those of their UK comrades; even now the Ministry of Defence appears to be trying to reduce its financial commitment through a policy of early retirement. But there is no shortage of support when it comes to strategies to promote military efficiency, and language is at the centre of these. The Gurkha Language Wing organises courses “to equip Gurkha soliders to operate alongside multinational forces,” including a 9-week English programme for new recruits.

Clearly it is crucial that participants in international training exercises and actual operations are able to understand each other, and the number of such collaborations is increasing. NATO has expanded beyond the group of 12 North Atlantic nations which formed it in 1947. Turkey has been a member since 1952, and the break-up of the Soviet Union led to Individual Partnership plans with several other Asian countries including Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. In 2004 the latter created a military language institute in Almaty to train officers in French, German, Turkish, Chinese and above all English.

Military English is now a significant and growing business. In 2005 a series of coursebooks for teaching military peacekeepers was shortlisted for an Elton, the ELT world’s equivalent of an Oscar. UK-based Military English Language Training Ltd advertises itself as far away as India as a “combination of English language teachers and former military personnel” with experience from British, NATO and UN operations. It targets members of overseas armed forces expecting to take part in multinational operations and its website http://www.military-english.co.uk/ includes pages in Arabic. The British Council has been particularly active in this field, managing a programme of Peacekeeping English projects on behalf of the UK’s Ministry of Defence and Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

But British military involvement in Asia is dwarfed by that of the United States, whose emergence by the end of the Second World War as a global military power was a major impetus behind the globalisation of English. In South Korea, for example, General Hodge set up an English military school in 1946 whose cadets included future president Park Chung Hee. The Korea Military Academy sought to adopt not only America’s military practices but also its doctrines and culture, with English language a key discipline. Today the Academy’s intensive English programmes target the whole cadet corps and aim “to cultivate officers capable of performing joint military operations with UN forces”. These include the four main annual exercises of the SK-US Combined Forces Command: Team Spirit, Ulchi Focus Lens, RSOI and Foal Eagle.

All the examples of military English mentioned above have been tools of powerful governments, but it should not be forgotten that English also has a small but significant role among Asia’s anti-government movements. Many of the ethnic-based forces fighting the Burmese government make extensive use of English to stay in contact with each other and the outside world. And when a faction of the Japanese Red Army hijacked a Japan Airlines flight in Dhaka in 1977 they refused to speak Japanese, even to the Japanese negotiator flown to Bangladesh. The tapes that survive from the incident reveal some of the communication problems that can occur when a well-educated but English-deficient group of hijackers try to convey threats about time limits and hostage executions to negotiators who either genuinely do not understand them or claim not to do so as a delaying tactic.

Police policies

The first time I got into trouble with the police in Japan was about two years after I’d started living there and already spoke the language fairly well. I’d borrowed a friend’s car but hadn’t been able to return it before going away on a 3-day skiing trip, so I parked it in a quiet suburban street. When I returned I found lots of plastic tags tied to the car’s wing-mirrors. In some countries, when you park a car illegally they clamp the wheel or tow the vehicle away. In Japan they just clamp your mirror, believing that drivers will be embarrassed into paying their fine immediately. I am not easily embarrassed. But I didn’t want to cause my friend any trouble. So I phoned to say I would go straight to the police. “Just be very apologetic, “ she advised me. “And don’t speak Japanese!”

When I arrived, a huge cop led me into a small room with bars on the windows. So it was easy to feel apologetic. However, since he didn’t seem to speak English, it was hard for me to avoid using Japanese. But I decided to speak it as badly as possible. The big cop told me I had committed a very serious offence and the fine would be heavy. Then he looked up and changed to English. “Hmm, seem you not live in Japan so long. Maybe not understand Japanese customs. Ok, just go. But next time no parking.” I have often wondered how much I would have had to pay if I had spoken in fluent Japanese.


I realise some foreigners don’t get treated so kindly (especially if they are from Asia or Africa). But I’ve heard many tales from English-speaking friends about how they escaped trouble – as long as they didn’t use Japanese, or Chinese, or Korean, or whatever the language of the place they were in. Perhaps it is because the police are busy and don’t want to go through the embarrassment of explaining things in English unless a serious crime is involved.


While most Asian police officers hardly speak English, I have come across several exceptions, such as a very fluent young Tokyo cop who came to investigate when my New Zealand colleague had his apartment burgled, and a Bangkok friend who had to study English, often with foreign instructors, in order to enter the commando force there.


And then there are the tourist police. Countries whose economies rely heavily on tourism, such as Indonesia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand, have special police forces to deal with crimes against (or sometimes by) tourists, and they have to be fluent in English.

Thailand’s Thammasat University has produced a textbook entitled English for Tourist Police. Its chapters, which include Giving Directions (“Make a left turn.”) and Complaining and Showing Sympathy (“Oh that’s too bad!”), give an idea of what situations Thai police expect to encounter when dealing with foreigners. A section on robbery has a story of a foreigner being given whisky with sleeping pills in it; another is about getting refunds from jewelery shops who overcharge tourists.

China made English lessons compulsory for officers in Beijing during the Olympics. It even produced a 252-page book: Olympic Security English. This has the usual sections on traffic accident, thefts and lost passports, but seems to hold the view that foreign men are likely like to get drunk and molest local women. It is full of expressions such as: “Please blow into the intoxiliser” and “Don’t take too many liberties with the waitress”.

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.

Asia writes back

When Kiran Desai won the 2006 Man Booker Prize for Inheritance of Loss it came as no surprise that yet another Indian-born writer had won the Commonwealth’s most prestigious literature award. Previous Indian winners include Ruth Prawal Jhabvala (Heat and Dust, 1975), Salmon Rushdie (Midnight’s Children, 1981) and Suzanna Arundhati Roy (God of Small Things, 1997). No less than three of Anita Desai’s novels have been short-listed for the prize.

Indians have made an enormous and varied contribution to English writing, from the intellectual Rabindranath Tagore – one of only four Asians to win the Nobel Prize for literature – to the hugely popular R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao, whose long careers spanned the 20th century. Nowadays Vikram Seth consistently makes best-seller lists throughout the English-speaking world, while Shobha De’s steamy novels have sold over a million copies. Although some Indian authors achieved fame overseas before becoming known back home, such as Harvard-educated Preeti Singh and Oxford PhD-holder Amitrav Ghosh, many write very much with the domestic market in mind. Chetan Bhagat’s One Night at the Call Center specifically draws Indian readers’ attention to the mixed blessing of English-language skills in a world where educated locals end up doing boring outsourced work for less-educated Americans.

The University of Delhi’s Radha Chakravaty has claimed that the best writing in English comes from regions where English is not the people’s mother tongue. While this ignores the fact that most of the literary class of South Asians were educated primarily in English rather than a local language, it does remind us that many authors there are multilingual: Sudha Murty, a renowned social activist who together with her husband set up India’s largest software company, publishes novels in both English and Kannada.

Literary success should not mask the fact that most Indians have had something of a love-hate relationship with English. Narayan and Raja Rao used the language to create a different image of the empire from that depicted by British writers like Kipling and E.M. Forster. Prominent nationalists such as Gandhi and Nehru condemned English as a foreign imposition while using it expertly themselves. Arundhati Roy was angered on a recent British TV show when it was suggested Indian writers adopted the language freely: in her novel, children are punished for using Malayalam at school. She told radio listeners that even though English was her first language, “The empire has interfered with my deepest thoughts.” In fact the colonial period had instances not only of Indians being forced to learn English against their will, but of others wanting to learn it but being discouraged by the British.

J-pop, K-pop and Asia-pop

Most Japanese pop songs contain English phrases. Some even have English titles. This is quite interesting since, unlike Malaysians, Filipinos and Indians, Japanese rarely switch into English when speaking to each other. In the 1980s and 1990s, Nakamori Akina had a string of best-selling Japanese singles with titles such as Southern Wind and Everlasting Love. Mr Children’s albums include Everything and Kind of Love. SMAP’s singles include Can’t stop loving!, Triangle, Dear Woman and Mermaid.

In addition to English titles, Japanese pop has a tradition of including a few English phrases in their lyrics. Amuro Namie’s Can you celebrate begins

Can you celebrate?
Can you kiss me tonight?
We will love long long time [sic]
Eien te iu kotoba nannte shiranakatta yo ne
[You didn’t even know the word forever, right?]

Glay’s Happiness includes the lines

Don’t wanna hurt you any more
Tell me the meaning of your happiness
Anata ga ikite yuku koto no kotae ni nari wa shinai darou
[I can’t be the answer you’re looking for]

Hip hop has fostered new ways of bringing English into Japanes e songs. Dabo’s Lexus Gucci inserts repetitions of ‘Yes, y’all on and on and on and on’ and ‘Hey hey hey’ into rapid Japanese spoken with an Americanised accent. Rip Slyme (which in Japanese sounds just the same as ‘Lips Rhyme’, the title of their debut album), has a rap song called ‘Bring your style’ that includes

Yo bringin that, Yo bring that style
Jinrui saigo no freaky side
[Humanity’s final freaky side]

Is there anything more to this fondness for English apart from playing with words? SMAP member Katori Shingo is involved in a TV programme encouraging people to improve their English and his own limited ability in the language seems to work to his advantage with audiences. His book English Berabera (‘English fluently’) was one of the ten top bestsellers of 2003.

Alastair Pennycook of University of Technology in Sydney thinks bands like Rip Slyme are “native users of a new English, a blend of Japanese and English.” He uses rap in Japan and Southeaast Asia to support his view that traditional distinctions between languages are no longer valid.

But Andrew Moody of the University of Macau thinks it is more a question of Japanese singers paying tribute to American music by adopting English song titles and phrases, and in the case of performers like Nakata Keisuke, singing Japanese in an Americanised way. There is also a tradition of playing with words so that, when sung rapidly, they could be heard either as Japanese or English. For example, Mika Nakashima in Cry no more sings ‘I don’t wanna cry…ato dono kurai (how much more)’, the Japanese kurai being sung exactly the same as English ‘cry’. For many years, one very popular programme on Japanese television has included a section called Sora Mimi – lyrics in American and British songs that somehow sound like something strange and funny in Japanese.

A sign that J-pop may be becoming more international is the popularity of Utada Hikaru. Born in New York to Japanese parents, she has written several songs in English. Her third English single, Easy Breezy, includes the line ‘I am Japanesey’, suggesting that she is Japanese – but not typically so.

Pop music in other parts of Asia also shows a fondness for English. I need somebody by Thai singer Bie includes the refrain

Need someone to look into their eyes
And make my heart feel weak
Be thinking of me, be thinking of me.

South Korea's BoA, who is also very popular in Japan, has released albums of Korean songs entitled ID Peace B; Atlantis Princess, My Name and Girls on Top. Many of her songs, such as Don’t start now comes in Korean, Japanese and English versions. The lyrics of the Korean version of ID Peace B include ‘Peace B is Network ID’ and ‘Connecting is my Neverland.’

Polite is right

While all societies value politeness, certain behavior that is tolerated in some places may be considered rude in others. Who speaks first in a conversation? When do we give a gift or open one that we receive? Where should we sit at a dinner party? How close should we stand to the person we are talking to? Such social rules can vary quite a lot. And it is probably true to say that most Asian cultures pay more attention to social and age differences than English-speaking societies.

The different ways in which Asian societies demonstrate politeness tend to influence the way they use English. Most Thais feel it is rude to speak loudly in public, for example, and so they speak quietly in English as well as Thai. Japanese say sumimasen a lot, even when they don't feel they have done anything wrong, so not surprisingly they also say sorry very often when speaking English. One information video at Narita airport even warned travellers not to say sorry if they had a car accident in the USA in case American lawyers exploited this as an admission of their guilt.

All languages have a wide range of ways to say the same things more politely or less politely, but in many Asian languages the choice can be complex. Korean and Japanese have different sets of verbs and even nouns to indicate the relationship among speakers. At my university, for example, professors were recently advised to use polite forms when writing material to be read by students, so I had to change all the verbs in a document I had written. In Malay, the choice of pronoun depends on the relative positions of speakers. When people are not sure, they often use English pronouns such as “I” and “you”. In Javanese, the different levels of politeness are so distinct they are really separate languages.

Even greetings can be complex. Before getting to the point of a conversation, Arabs often spend a long time expressing wishes and exchanging enquiries, and since it is not easy to find cultural equivalents for Guwwa (May God give you strength) or Eshloonik (What is your colour?), such phrases are often left in Arabic when people speak English. Many Pakistani friends greet me with As-Salamu alaikum (Peace be with you) and expect me to reply Wa-alaikum salam (And also on you), but I have some Indonesian friends who think it inappropriate for non-Muslims to use such phrases.

More casual greetings around Asia include 'Have you eaten?' (the polite answer is always Yes!) and 'Where are you going?' (you don't need to reply accurately). Most languages have a set phrase for when people start to eat or go on a journey. However, there are certain experiences that some cultures acknowledge and others ignore. Japanese has a phrase used after sharing a journey or tiring experience (otsukaresama) which really has no English equivalent. Indonesians wish you Selamat mandi(Have a good bath). On the other hand, few Asian cultures acknowledge a sneeze, so ‘Bless you!’ is not often heard among Asia’s English speakers.

In one of her novels, writer Amy Tan jokes that Chinese visitors to an American home could starve. When offered food, they refuse out of politeness, expecting the offer to be repeated until eventually they accept. But their American hosts may assume they are not hungry and never ask again.

Asian students are often taught that English is a straightforward language in which people say exactly what they think. So they may be surprised to learn that most Americans are actually very polite. It may be true that many English-speaking cultures are less formal than Asian ones, but it would be wrong to suggest that English speakers are always direct. In fact it seems to me that although most Asians tend to be rather formal with strangers, with their friends they are more direct than Americans or Britons.



Conversely, visitors to Asia who expect everyone to behave politely may be surprised to get blocked by Singaporeans pushing on to the train before they can get out; or to be asked how much money they earn by Koreans!