Is it English, Spanish, French or German? Perhaps Italian, Portuguese or Danish? These are all languages of the colonists; people who left their own lands in search of wealth and power, conquest and extraction. Once the colonists had taken what was given and, when that was not enough, removed by brute-force, gold, diamonds, bauxite, lithium, tobacco, sugar, rice and potatoes, chocolate and fine dyes, art, beautifully woven cloths, religious artefacts and medicines they left something that we now take for granted; their language.
Language that was forced upon us, replaced that which had existed for millennium, in many cases, long before the invasion of the European. This is now the language I write, read and speak. More importantly it is the language in which I think, imagine and create. My own ancestral languages were lost many hundreds of years ago, or are they?
This month I was honoured to present the opening plenary at the 2026 IATEFL (International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language) in Brighton, UK where I explored the role of the English language – the coloniser – in our teaching in international schools today. To prepare for the conference I interviewed several students, colleagues, artists and scientists; focussing on the thoughts and ideas of four. Each one of them has grown up under the cloud of colonisation and the stealth of non-western, colonial languages in favour, in this case, of English.
In teaching English to speakers of other languages, often performance in the language takes precedence over our multiple responsibilities, and we fail to consider the weight language places on the learner, too often erasing the intergenerational nature of culture and our ways of being in the world with others. The following are some of the questions I pose.
- How, then, can we avoid the coloniality of language when English is the language of the coloniser?
- How do we break down the barriers that separate the hierarchies in our teaching systems and places of work?
- How do we teach through the language, about the language and with the language so that we open worlds and not shut them down?
However, in times of social upheaval, oppressive regimes and cultural appropriation there is now an explosion of creative expression. Non-western languages can thrive and are being revived. Still, their value as a way of transmitting culture is in danger of being lost to the occidental values and beliefs now promoted. New forms of thinking are emerging. Young people are imagining their futures, now.
Cultures in which dialogue, deep thinking, adaptation and re-orientation take the stage, they survive and thrive, even under cataclysmic change. New ways emerge and old languages take on a variety of forms of expression, signally different ways forward.
We all hold language in our hands, as Toni Morrison so eloquently signals in her Nobel Prize acceptance lecture in 1993. Since the future of language, all languages, is in our hands we have a responsibility. Now what will we do with it?
Imagine what is possible!
Patricia Angoy 