New Zealand English in the News

Recent news about the politics of language in New Zealand merits reflection. The Greek Reporter has chronicled a derogatory reaction to the new status of the English language in New Zealand in “New Zealand MP Calls English a ‘Bastardisation’ of Greek During Official Language Debate.” Apparently, a New Zealand Member of Parliament – Tamatha Paul – has dismissed English as an impure language, referring to it as a “bastardisation of Greek, Old Norse, [and] Latin” during a stormy parliamentary exchange regarding the legal standing of the language, after a bill had passed making English official, in a manner similar to that of te reo Māori and New Zealand Sign Language. Her speech, published by ABC News (Australia), has seemingly gone viral (“NZ Green MP Calls English a 'Bastard' language During Parliamentary Debate”).

The newspaper states that “Paul argued the change achieved nothing, because English already operates as an official language in practice. She said Parliament had wasted its final 100 days before the election on a bill that does not matter, while New Zealanders struggle to survive”. What the New Zealand MP said about the status of English in England is true: even in England the language is considered official only de facto (in practice) though not de jure (by law). Similarly, the U. S. Constitution does not explicitly treat English as the official language although some states do. Referring to a language as “bastard”, however, signals a lack of knowledge about modern languages; most are a mixture any way. The notion of a pure language is a linguistic and historical fiction. You’d have to be pretty isolated for your language to maintain a semblance of purity. All human languages evolve through constant contact, borrowing, mutation, and cross-pollination, meaning no single language exists in a state of absolute isolation or unadulterated originality. The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact confirms this: “Every language has been influenced in some way by other languages through contact-induced linguistic change. Potentially any features can be transferred from one language to another if the sociolinguistic and structural circumstances are right”. 

At the risk of oversimplification, think of chemicals in a lab being mixed to produce new compounds. That would be a better metaphor for language formation or evolution. English, with its Germanic base, has absorbed expressions from a multitude of other languages, including Greek and Latin. What had really irritated the New Zealand MP was the time wasted in parliament debating language matters when more pressing social issues needed attention. The anger should have stopped there, rather than being directed at the English language!