One of the Nowruz traditions involves leaping over bonfires to rid oneself of pain and sorrow (Image credit: Borna News)

As people in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, Iran, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan prepare to celebrate Nowruz, there is a palpable sense of excitement and anticipation in the air. Nowruz, which literally means “new day” in Persian, marks the beginning of spring and the start of the new year for many peoples across the Middle East and Central Asia.

Nowruz is celebrated on the vernal equinox, typically falling on March 20 or 21, and lasts for thirteen days.

Rooted in the Zoroastrian tradition, Nowruz is a time of renewal, hope, and cultural celebration that transcends borders and unites people across the Persianate world.

Nowruz Down Under

Although in the Southern hemisphere Nowruz falls in the beginning of autumn rather than spring, still it takes on a special significance for Iranian Australians as we bring the traditions and customs of our homeland to this distant land.

The Haft-Sin table, with its seven symbolic items representing rebirth and renewal, takes centre stage in our celebrations. From sprouts symbolising growth to apples representing beauty and health, each item holds deep cultural significance and is a reminder of the values we cherish.

Spirit of Nowruz

Haftsin Table in the Victorian Parliament (Image Credit: Australian Iranian Society of Victoria)

Poetry and music fill our homes with joy and inspiration during Nowruz. Poets and writers have long captured the essence of this festival in their verses, expressing themes of renewal and spiritual growth. Music, too, plays a vital role, with traditional songs and melodies evoking a sense of nostalgia and connection to our roots.

At the heart of Nowruz is the spirit of unity and solidarity. As Iranians around the world come together to celebrate, we are reminded of the bonds that unite us as a community.

Solidarity with the people in Iran

Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran in 1979, the regime has suppressed the nation’s multifaceted and ancient culture under a theocratic dictatorship. However, for Iranians, both inside Iran and in the diaspora, Nowruz is not just a celebration of a new year. It is a celebration of our rich cultural heritage, resilience in the face of adversity, and hope for a brighter future.

So, this Nowruz, as an Australian-Iranian, deeply concerned about the future of Iran, I unite with my compatriots across the globe who embrace and celebrate Nowruz. For us, at this moment in history, Nowruz is more than just a cultural tradition. It is a unifying force and a symbol of Iranian-ness and unity, with a rich history that predates the current regime.

At the outset of Nowruz, we remember Mahsa Amini, and many other young people whose tragic deaths during the recent protests against the injustices in Iran have ignited a renewed sense of solidarity among Iranians both inside Iran and in the diaspora. Their memories remind us of the importance of standing together in the face of adversity and working towards a brighter future.

My music

This Nowruz, it’s fitting to dedicate to everyone two of my songs, that encapsulate the longing for freedom, love, and peace, “Hamseda” (Sympathizer) and “Eshghe-Bimarz” (Endless Love), which were created by a group of artists inside Iran and performed by myself.

Happy Nowruz! نوروزتان پیروز

Map of Transoxania (Source: Wikipedia)

Editor’s note: Arabic language learning is experiencing a revival in many parts of the world, such as China, where it may be a source of empowerment for impoverished Muslim women. This post by Mehrinigor Akhmedova (Bukhara State University, Uzbekistan) and Rizwan Ahmad (Qatar University, Qatar) takes us to Uzbekistan, a part of the post-Soviet world, where some aspects of Transoxania’s multilingual past are being revived for religious and economic reasons.

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Mehrinigor Akhmedova, Bukhara State University, Uzbekistan
Rizwan Ahmad, Qatar University, Qatar
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Recently, interest in the learning of Arabic language and script among the young generation of Uzbeks has been rising. Young Uzbeks are learning Arabic not simply because of their faith, Islam, but also because it is desirable in the domestic job market and opens a window of opportunities in the Arabic-speaking Gulf states.

In September 2023, the Department of Islamic History Source Studies, Philosophy at Bukhara State University invited a professor from Egypt’s Al-Azhar University to teach courses in Arabic. This is a significant change in the history of Arabic and Islamic learning in Uzbekistan. During the Soviet rule and early years of independence in 1991, Uzbekistan witnessed many ups and down regarding the place of Islam in the constitutionally secular Uzbek society. In 1998, fearing radical Islamic ideologies, the government closed many madrasas, traditional schools of learning, established soon after the independence.

Liquidation of Madrasas and Teaching of Arabic in Uzbekistan

Although the repression of Islam in the former Soviet republics, including modern-day Uzbekistan, began during the Tsarist regime, it reached its climax during the Soviet rule following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. The state repression of Islam took many forms, including the persecution and killing of mudarris and ulama, teachers and scholars of Islam, nationalization of vaqf properties, Islam endowments, and forceful removal of veils from Muslim women, known as the hujum campaign.

Dome of the Mir-i-Arab Madrasa (Image credit: Wikipedia)

On the educational and sociolinguistic fronts, the repression led to the dismantling of the centuries old traditional Islamic educational system of maktabs and madrasas where students learned to read and recite the Qur’an in Arabic. In 1928, the Fourth Meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic issued an order on the liquidation of all old method schools and madrasas. According to Ashirbek Muminov and Rinat Shigabdinov, before the 1928 decree, there were 1,362 madrasas in Uzbekistan with 21,183 students enrolled in them.

Another measure that damaged Arabic teaching and learning was the decision to replace the traditional Arabic script of Uzbek with a Latin-based writing system in 1927. Ten years later in 1937, as a measure of Russification, the Cyrillic script replaced the Latin script. These measures dealt a death blow to the teaching of Islam and Arabic language and script in Uzbekistan. In 1945, as a token of acceptance of religious institutions, Stalin allowed Mir-e-Arab madrasa, established in the 16th century, in Bukhara, to reopen with a limited number of students. Subsequently, two more institutions of Islamic learning were established; namely, madrasa Baraq Khan in 1956 and Tashkent Islamic Institute of Imam al-Bukhari in 1971.

Arabic within Multilingual Transoxiana

Present-day Uzbekistan, which in pre-modern times, was part of the larger Transoxiana region in Central Asia, was a thriving center of Arabic language and literature. The Persian-speaking Samanids (819-999 AD), who ruled Central Asia from their capital in Bukhara under the suzerainty of the Arabic-speaking Abbasids, maintained Arabic as the language of administration, Islamic learning, and sciences. The Samanids simultaneously encouraged use of Persian in the court. Under their patronage, many Arabic texts were translated into Persian, including the Quranic tafsir, exegesis, of Al-Tabari (d. 923 AD) and the Kalila wa Dimnah, a collection of fables, originally written in Sanskrit.

1958 Soviet stamp celebrating the 1100th birthday of Rudaki (Image credit: Wikipedia)

Rudaki (858-940), born and raised in Bukhara and regarded as the founder of New Persian Poetry, was granted the esteemed position of the court poet of the Samanids.

In this multilingual linguistic and intellectual environment, there emerged in Bukhara two towering figures among the scholars of Hadith, the most foundational Islamic text after the Quran, namely Muhammad ibn Isma’il al-Bukhari aka Imam Bukhari (810-870 AD) and Muhammad ibn Isa known as Al-Tirmidhi (824-892). Both were born in the Bukhara region of what is today Uzbekistan. In pursuit of the compilation of the Hadith, the sayings of Prophet Muhammad, they travelled widely to different parts of the Muslim world. They wrote their collections of hadith in Arabic, known as Sahih Al-Bukhari and Sunan Al-Tirmidhi respectively.

To the illustrious history of Bukhara as a center of Arabic can be added the polymath and physician Ibn Sina (980-1037), known as Avicenna in Latin Western sources. He is considered to be the father of early modern medicine. Born in Afshona in Bukhara, Ibn Sina, had memorized the whole of the Quran before the age of ten. Later he turned his attention to the study of medicine. He authored many books in Arabic on philosophy, mathematics and other branches of knowledge. In medicine, his famous work is Al-Qanoon fi Al-Tib, “The Canon of Medicine.” This work consists of five volumes with over 1 million words. He was the physician of the Samanid ruler Nuh II (976-997).

In September 2023, in a speech delivered in the UN, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the president of Uzbekistan, named Imam Bukhari and Ibn Sina, among others, as scholars who richly contributed to science and showed that Islam was a religion of knowledge and peace.

Rise of Interest in Arabic in contemporary Bukhara

After the repression of Arabic and Islamic teaching during Soviet rule, there are signs of change in today’s Uzbekistan. In addition to official institutions such as Bukhara University encouraging the teaching of Arabic, many private language centers have also recently emerged in the city of Bukhara. There are over 50 private language centers in Bukhara, including popular ones like Takallum, An-Nisa, and Naqshbandi School.

Drawing of viscera from Ibn Sina’s “Canon of Medicine” (Source: Wellcome Collection)

On their Facebook page, Takallum invites students as follows, “…reciting the Qur’an with Tajweed is our obligatory deed and our deed will lead us to Paradise! Lead your friends to paradise, help them read the Quran, be a true friend for them”. Evidently, for Takallum the learning of Arabic is coupled with Islamic beliefs and practices.

Based on a pilot study conducted in September-October 2023, we found that there are clear signs of the rise in the interest in Arabic learning. First, we discuss a survey that was given online to an active Telegram group called NIسA_School, Ayollar Maktabi, with over 14,000 women members. The use of the Arabic letter س in the first word of the group is indexical of the fact that it brings back the Arabic language and its history in Uzbekistan.

Next, we discuss statistics of students who received Arabic language proficiency certificates from Davlat Test Markazi Buxoro Viloyat Bo’limi, National Test Center, Bukhara Region.

In response to the survey question ‘what was your goal of learning Arabic?’, an overwhelming 82% of the participants (N=347) answered that they considered learning Arabic as most important knowledge for their self-development. Related to this personal/spiritual goal of learning Arabic was the response from 14% of the participants who learned Arabic in order to teach it to others.

It is important to mention here that Muslims believe that God rewards those who read the Qur’an in the original Arabic, even if they do not understand its message. This means that the original Arabic text has spiritual value that cannot be gained by reading it in translation.

The remaining 4% learned Arabic because they wanted to live and work in an Arabic-speaking country.

Another indicator of the rising interest in Arabic comes from the data of students who have received a proficiency certificate in Arabic based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). In 2022, Uzbekistan started to use the six-point CEFR proficiency levels from A1-A2, basic user, through B1-B2, independent user, to C1-C2, proficient user. Since the implementation of CEFR in 2022, the total number of students receiving CEFR enrolled in different Arabic language teaching centers in the Bukhara region alone was 3,079. The vast majority of them (92%) received B1 and B2 and the remaining 8% received the higher proficiency level C1. No Uzbek students attained C2, the highest-level proficiency.

Post-Soviet transformations

Bukhara, Old City (Image credit: Wikipedia)

Another important factor propelling people’s interest in Arabic learning is that the Government of Uzbekistan encourages learning of foreign languages and rewards those who earn high-level proficiency certificates in them. According to a presidential decree of 2021, teachers of Arabic and other foreign languages with a C1 certificate will be paid an additional bonus of 50% of their basic salary. Similarly, employees in any government agency possessing any national or international certificate in a foreign language will receive an extra bonus of 20% on their basic salary. Furthermore, students applying for admission into master’s and Ph.D. in the philological studies must show a C1 level proficiency in a foreign language and those in non-philological fields must have a B2 level proficiency.

The discussion above clearly suggests that the changes following the collapse of the Soviet Union have transformed the linguistic and educational fields. Uzbekistan, one of the great centers of Arabic language during the medieval era is witnessing a renaissance in the learning of Arabic after a long period of state suppression. Many young Uzbeks are rediscovering their history by learning the Arabic language and its script. The government’s incentives of learning a foreign language make Arabic learning even more attractive.

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Akhmedova Mehrinigor Bahodirovna is Associate Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English Literature & Translation Studies at Bukhara State University. Her research covers issues related to translation, literature, spirituality and sociolinguistics.

Despite being ordinary and unremarkable, a little Persian preposition has caught international attention over the past three months: “baraye” (“برای”), which means “for, because of, for the sake of.”

What makes “baraye” special?

As you might have guessed, the sudden explosion of “baraye” onto the global stage is connected to the ongoing protest movement in Iran, and its brutal repression – similar to the stories of the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom” and of pop stick paddle boats.

Baraye – the anthem of a freedom movement

“Baraye” is the title of a song by a young musician, Shervin Hajipour, released on his Instagram channel on September 28, 2022.

The lyrics of the song were compiled from tweets stating reasons why (“baraye”) tweeters are protesting and what they are protesting against (“baraye”) and protesting for (“baraye”): baraye dancing in the streets, baraye fear when kissing, baraye my sister, your sister, our sisters, and so on. The song culminates in “baraye woman, life, freedom, baraye azadi, baraye azadi.”

Shervin was imprisoned and forced to delete the song from his Instagram channel within 48 hours of its release. However, by then, the song had reportedly already been viewed 40 million times, and it had been posted and reposted on countless other platforms.

Initially restricted to Persian-speaking audiences inside and outside Iran, the song soon reached a global audience. How did that happen?

Baraye at protest rallies

First, the song made it from online spaces to the real world through global solidarity rallies. Played on large screens and over loudspeakers, soon protesters started to sing along, as in this example from Berlin.

Baraye covered by artists around the world

Second, more and more artists started to cover the song. One of the versions with the widest reach was sung by British rock band Coldplay during a performance in Buenos Aires, which was broadcast to 81 countries. Another major live performance by German-Iranian singer Sogand was broadcast on German national TV, where thousands of audience members were shown singing along to the final lines “baraye azadi.” Another popular performance is by a collective of some of the most prominent French artists.

It is not only celebrities who are covering the song. In a true testament to the song’s global inspiration, choirs have taken up “Baraye” for their performance projects. Students of a German high school, for instance, sang “Baraye” during their solidarity day with Iran on November 16. In a regional TV segment about their day of action, they were even shown practicing Persian pronunciation with a language teacher in preparation for the performance. Another version that has been widely shared on social media is the rendition by a choir in the small French town of Chalon-Sur-Saône.

The list could go and on. New cover versions are being released all the time, by artists from many parts of the globe. Only last week, a feminist art collective in Rojava released this haunting version.

Baraye in translation

Third, translation played an important role in making the Persian song accessible to global audiences. Many of the music videos floating around the Internet are fitted with subtitles in languages other than Persian. I’ve seen versions with English, French, German, Kurdish, Swedish, and Turkish subtitles. I’m sure there are lots more.

Beyond translated subtitles, the song has also inspired a wave of reinterpretations in other languages. Australian singer Shelley Segal has produced an English version. Other versions receiving a lot of attention include a Swedish version by pop star Carola Häggkvist, a German version by folk singers Lisa Wahlandt & Martin Kälberer, and a version in Iranian Sign Language by Maleehe Taherkhani. Again, the list could go on and on.

Baraye: the global struggle for freedom and justice

Slate Magazine has just declared that ““Baraye” is objectively the most important song of 2022.”

Singing “Baraye” is a way for the world to express its solidarity with the Iranian people and their struggle for freedom. Their struggle is our struggle, in a world where freedom is under threat everywhere. The most recent report on civil society by the German human rights organization “Brot für die Welt” shows that only 3% of the global population live in truly free societies. Another 8% live in societies with narrowed rights (Australia is in this category). The remaining 89% of the world’s population live in obstructed, repressed, and closed societies. Iranians find themselves in a closed society, along with over a quarter of the human population.

“Baraye” strikes a chord because we all need to ask ourselves what we are fighting against and fighting for on this broken planet that we share:

Baraye dancing in the street; Baraye fear while kissing; Baraye my sister, your sister, our sister; Baraye changing rotten minds.
Baraye shame of poverty; Baraye yearning for an ordinary life; Baraye the scavenger kid and his dreams; Baraye the command economy.
Baraye air pollution; Baraye dying trees; Baraye cheetahs going extinct; Baraye innocent, outlawed dogs.
Baraye the endless crying; Baraye the repeat of this moment; Baraye the smiling face; Baraye students; Baraye the future.
Baraye this forced paradise; Baraye the imprisoned intellectuals; Baraye Afghan kids; Baraye all the barayes.
Baraye all these empty slogans; Baraye the collapsing houses; Baraye peace; Baraye the sun after a long night.
Baraye the sleeping pills and insomnia; Baraye man, country, prosperity; Baraye the girl who wished she was a boy; Baraye woman, life, freedom.
Baraye freedom; Baraye azadi.

Memorial for Kian Pirfalak at Isfahan University (Source: Twitter)

In the Name of the God of the Rainbow, let’s today think about bilingual double vision. Double vision is a condition where you see two images of the same thing. The two images can be separate from each other but, more often, one overlaps the other, blurring the boundaries.

“Azadi” and “Freedom”

Learning a new language creates a new way of seeing, overlapping previous ways of seeing. The Persian word for “freedom,” for instance, “آزادی” (“azadi”), begins with the first letter of the Perso-Arabic alphabet (آ) and ends with the last (ی). This feature makes it a very special word. It symbolizes that freedom is essential, in the same way that Christians say that God is the alpha and the omega – the first and last letter of the Greek alphabet – to indicate the comprehensiveness of God. Like the Christian God, آزادی is all-encompassing and includes everything else. In the case of آزادی, that “everything else” is life itself, as the آ and ی frame the word for “born”, “زاد” (“zad”).

Once you’ve learned Persian “آزادی”, English “freedom”, too, takes on a different tinge, and comes to be seen as essential to life itself.

The double vision created by “آزادی” and “freedom” exists on the level of the language system. In fact, you do not need any level of bilingual competence to appreciate that different languages provide different perspectives on the world, as ever-popular trivia lists of supposedly “untranslatable” words demonstrate (see, e.g., “203 most beautiful untranslatable words” or “28 untranslatable words from around the world”).

The more powerful double vision effects lie well beyond the language system. Becoming bilingual is not only, and maybe not even predominantly, about learning another language system but about joining another discourse community. And what discourse communities are concerned with and talk about can be wildly different, even in our globalized world.

Pop stick paddle boats carried at Sydney solidarity rally (Source: Twitter)

“Pop stick paddle boat” is another word for freedom

Let’s go back to “freedom.” Another Persian word for “freedom” is “قایق پارویی چوب بستنی” (“pop stick paddle boat”). I’m not kidding, even if no dictionary will tell you so. “Pop stick paddle boat” also means “life,” “justice,” “peace,” “future for our children,” “end oppression,” “stop killing innocents,” and “we mourn the death of a 10-year-old boy.”

“Pop stick paddle boat” took on all these meanings only a few days ago when 10-year-old Kian Pirfalak was shot dead by anti-riot police. Shortly after his death, a short home video emerged of Kian, proudly showing off a pop stick paddle boat he had built. In the video, he explains how the contraption works, starting his explanation with “in the name of God,” the conventional formula that often begins educational events in the Islamic Republic. In Islam, God has 100 names, and the name that Kian chooses in the video is “the God of the Rainbow.”

Kian’s tragic death and the joyful video of a little inventor have since imbued pop stick paddle boats with grief and hope. The devices and their paper boat variations have become features at protest rallies and have inspired protest songs and videos.

The tears through which I have looked at these images have literally given me double vision. It is an apt metaphor for living a bilingual life. I’ll never look at a little boat nor a rainbow again without also seeing a murdered child and the Iranian struggle for freedom.

Related content:

Piller, Ingrid. (2022). “Women, life, freedom” – the slogan swimming against the global tide. Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/women-life-freedom-the-slogan-swimming-against-the-global-tide/

“Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” banner displayed by Bayern Munich soccer fans (Image credit: Archie Rhind-Tutt)

Some recent images from around the globe: protest rally in Rome with a banner featuring the slogan “donna vita libertà” (“woman, life, freedom”); cover of the French newspaper Libération with the bilingual Persian-French headline “زن زندگی آزادی/femme, vie, liberté” (“woman, life, freedom”); fans at a match between two major German soccer teams holding a banner with the Kurdish slogan “jin, jiyan, azadî” (“woman, life, freedom”); video of feminist protesters in Chile chanting in Persian and Spanish “zan, zendegi, azadi; mujer, vida, libertad” (“woman, life, freedom”); poster for a rally in Bilbao, in the Spanish Basque Country, with the bilingual Kurdish-Basque headline “jin jiyan azadi/emakume, bizitza, askatsuna” (“woman, life, freedom”).

The list could go on: in a few hours of internet search, I compiled a 100+ corpus of the slogan used on banners, posters, billboards, graffiti, in digital art, chants, and as hashtag – in 23 different languages. Since a few days ago, the slogan even has a Wikipedia entry, currently in English, Persian, and Kurdish.

That a protest slogan from outside the Anglosphere is spreading globally and multilingually is highly unusual. So, let’s explore the story of the slogan that is travelling against the global linguistic current!

International slogans

The word “slogan” comes from the Scottish Gaelic word “sluagh-ghairm”, which mean “battle cry”. Essentially, slogans are linguistic tools of mass mobilization. This means that the limits of a language are the limits of mobilization. For many mass movements – those devoted to local issues or those with national ideologies – this is not a problem. But movements that seek to mobilize across linguistic boundaries face a challenge.

“Woman, life, freedom” – bilingual English-Persian billboard display, Piccadilly Circus, London (Image credit: Xanyar)

The international workers’ movement has dealt with the linguistic problem of global mass mobilization through translation. One of the globally most recognizable slogans – “Workers of the world, unite!” – is a translation of a German original (“Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt Euch!”) and the Wikipedia entry for the slogan lists around 50 additional versions in other languages.

With the global spread of English, some slogans, particularly commercial ones, have taken a different route. Instead of translating slogans into all the languages of target markets, the English version is used internationally. Famous examples include Nike’s “Just do it”, Apple’s “Think different”, or Uniqlo’s “Made for all.”

A spin-off of “Made for all” can be found on the “Peace for all” t-shirt range, Uniqlo’s charity sale range. The example illustrates how commercial and political slogans have come to shade into each other under the hegemony of English. One of the many global roles of English is that it has also become the language of choice of global mobilization. Political slogans from the Anglosphere spread readily across linguistic borders, too. “Black Lives Matter” and “Me too” offer powerful recent examples.

Non-English slogans in the global arena

While “Black Lives Matter” and “Me too” readily captured the imagination of masses outside the USA, it is difficult to think of a non-English slogan that achieved any level of international recognition in recent decades.

The slogans of major protest movements have certainly been widely translated into English: for example, one of the main slogans of the Arab Spring, “الشعب يريد إسقاط النظام”, often appeared on banners as “the people demand removal of the regime”; or the main slogan of the Hong Kong Uprising “光復香港，時代革命” was often accompanied by “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.”

The function of these English translations, however, was not so much mobilization of non-Arabic-speaking or non-Chinese-speaking groups. Instead, their function was to draw international attention to these movements.

Kurdish origins of “Women, life, freedom”

The Kurdish slogan “jin, jiyan, azadî” has been around for about 20 years. It is closely associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a socialist armed guerilla movement operating in the Kurdish-majority areas of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Women’s liberation has been a cornerstone of the ideology of the PKK, and the slogan “jin, jiyan, azadî” speaks to a radical commitment to women’s liberation (“jin”), ecology (“jiyan”), and against state oppression (“azadî”).

"Jin, jiyan, azadî" comes from militant, anti-system women. It's a universal slogan – but it mustn't be stolen by the dominant liberal power system.

JIN cannot rely on capitalism and the state.
JIYAN means being against all war and arms trade.
AZADÎ is opposing colonialism.

— Dilar Dirik (@Dlrdrk1) October 1, 2022

The slogan first attracted a larger audience outside Kurdistan in the mid-2010s when a PKK-affiliated all-female militia unit in the Syrian civil war, YPJ, was part of the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish region, Rojava.

The YPJ was the subject of various documentaries and attracted some outside support, particularly in the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. And that is how the slogan began to spread. It could now be found in Kurdish and English as the title of a 2017 photo essay, in Kurdish and Italian as a book title and on the banner of a 2017 protest march in Rome, in Kurdish on a mural in Vienna, in Kurdish, German, English, and Turkish in a 2014 tweet, in Kurdish, English, German, French, and Turkish in a 2019 art exhibition, and in Kurdish and French in the 2018 movie “Les filles du soleil” (“Girls of the sun”).

“Women, life, freedom” extends from Kurdish to Persian

The internationalization of the slogan in the 2010s kept it firmly associated with the Kurdish struggle for self-determination. The traditional homeland of the Kurdish people is spread out over Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and in all these countries Kurds have faced various levels of oppression since the end of the First World War.

Persian-French bilingual version on the newspaper cover of “Libération”

With the recent exception of the autonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq, the Kurdish language is largely excluded from public life in the Kurdish areas and is not taught in schools. The linguistic oppression of Kurdish has been most extreme in Turkey, where it was even prohibited to be spoken in the home and could not even be named.

The situation of the Kurds in Iran is somewhat different from the other three main countries due to strong ethnolinguistic and cultural ties between the Kurds and other peoples of Iran. Kurdish and Persian belong to the same language family and share many similarities, in contrast to the majority languages of Turkey, Iraq, and Syria (Turkish and Arabic).

It is against this background that the transformation of the slogan from Kurdish to Persian must be understood: Kurdish “ژن ژیان ئازادی/jin, jiyan, azadî” and Persian “زن زندگی آزادی/zan, zendegi, azadi” share obvious similarities. The words for “woman” (ژن/jin, زن/zan) and “life” (ژیان/jiyan, زندگی/zendegi) are etymologically related across the two languages, and the word for “freedom” (ئازادی/azadî, آزادی/azadi) is the same in both languages.

The catalyst for the adoption of the slogan in Persian was the death of a young Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, in police custody in Tehran on September 16, 2022. “Women, life, freedom” became the battle cry of a movement against state oppression in Iran and beyond.

Transformations in the global linguistic hierarchy

The global linguistic hierarchy can be understood as a pyramid: the vast majority of languages play no official role anywhere in the world and, as peripheral languages, are relegated to the home and community. Above this large layer sits a smaller layer of a few hundred central languages with an official role in a nation state. On top of the hierarchy sit one single language only, English, the hyper-central language of globalization.

English is exceptional because it can be used for home, national, and international communication. English can fulfill all the linguistic needs of a speaker, and an English speaker may never have to learn another language.

Multilingual version as digital art (Source: H_Rafatnejad)

Speakers of a peripheral language, by contrast, cannot afford to remain monolingual. To get an education, to communicate nationally and internationally, they have to learn other languages.

The same is true for slogans. An English slogan can mobilize locally, nationally, and internationally.

Neither a Kurdish nor a Persian slogan offers such affordances. Peripheral to the global language system, Kurdish slogans can only mobilize locally. For national mobilization, they need to be translated into a language higher up in the hierarchy, Persian in this case. And for international mobilization, it needs to be translated yet again, first and foremost “up” into English, but also laterally into other languages.

Content worth listening to

The global linguistic hierarchy is not only about form (which language?) but also about content (what matters?).

Content in English is widely considered worth paying attention to, as is evidenced by translation statistics: English is the source language of the overwhelming majority of translations in the world. It is the source language of 1,266,110 translated documents recorded by UNICEF. The second most frequent source language is French, and it is far behind with 226,123 translations.

Content translated from Persian is minuscule in comparison although it still ranks as the 34^th most frequent source language with 3,041 documents. There are no statistics for Kurdish – translations from that language are so rare.

Seen against the global linguistic hierarchy, the story of “ژن ژیان ئازادی/jin, jiyan, azadî” and “زن زندگی آزادی/zan, zendegi, azadi” is quite miraculous: the slogan has been swimming against the global linguistic tide. It is meaningful to audiences around the globe who have been using it both in the original language and in translation.

Figure 1: Bilingual Squamish and English placard in West Vancouver’s Park Royal shopping village

As the Covid-19 pandemic heads toward its third year, with the Omicron variant in full swing, there is an ongoing need to reflect on language practices in multilingual contexts.

During my spring/summer 2021 research sabbatical in my West Vancouver home, I observed signs of the pandemic in every public space. As a sociolinguist, my ‘process of noticing’ centered around ‘language in use’ and social context. While the representation of multilingualism in globalized spaces is important to explore in ordinary times, Covid-induced disruptions to habituated social practices and familiarized communication patterns have shone a spotlight on linguistic diversity, access, inclusion, and social justice.

The City of Worlds – linguistic diversity in West Vancouver

Figure 2: Bilingual (English and Persian) bakery sign with monolingual (English) Covid-19 signs

Metro Vancouver, in which West Vancouver is one of its 21 municipalities, has many nicknames such as ‘Hollywood North’, ‘Lotusland’, ‘Raincouver’, ‘City of Glass’ and ‘City of Worlds’. The latter is perhaps the most apt owing not only to the area’s geographical diversity but also its highly multicultural and multilingual ecology. In West Vancouver, 41 percent of its population are immigrants. The two most commonly spoken languages other than English are Chinese and Persian with approximately 34 percent of recent immigrants to West Vancouver coming from China and 22 percent coming from Iran.

While English dominates West Vancouver’s linguistic landscape, languages other than English can also be seen, particularly in ‘sticky places’ or spaces which evoke feelings of cultural belonging and emotions such as ethnic grocery stores, cafes, or clubs. Bilingual signs in Canada’s two official languages, French and English, are also commonly seen in Federal spaces such as post offices or in national parks.

Initiatives to revitalize indigenous languages such as Squamish/Skwxwú7mesh have led to further representation of linguistic diversity on some street signs and on placards (Figure 1).

Linguistic diversity on Covid signage lagging behind

Despite the presence of languages other than English on a variety of non-Covid signage, when observing the proliferation of Covid signage in the pandemic’s second year, linguistic diversity was notably limited. For example, Covid signage in a Persian bakery (Figure 2) is monolingual (English only) despite the fact that non-Covid signage is bilingual (English and Persian).

Figure 3: Monolingual (English only) municipality-produced Covid-19 sign

In public spaces such as Ambleside Park, which runs parallel to West Vancouver’s seawall, municipality-produced Covid signage is in English only, with the use of local wildlife incorporated into signs, as seen by the eagle’s wingspan symbolizing the required two-meter social distancing rules (Figure 3). The use of wildlife to localize Covid social distancing signage has also been found in other areas of North America such as bear images in North Vancouver, ravens in the Yukon, and alligators in Florida. While such signage promotes inclusion of other living beings in the community, extensions to other languages are not evident.

Bilingual and trilingual Covid signs are rare, and consist of either Federal government-produced English/French signage such as the sign in transit on a Canada Post/Poste Canada van (Figure 4) or parts of English signs having been translated by community members as in library signage.

Figure 4: Bilingual (English and French) sign on a Canada Post/Poste Canada van

Even though only part of the large English Covid poster in the West Vancouver Memorial Library has been translated into Chinese and Persian (Figure 5), this translation effort stands out as important not only for accessing information in languages other than English but also for reinforcing spaces of belonging for linguistic minorities. To develop this practice further, the full poster could be translated rather than only the top part and attention could be given to making the languages on bilingual or trilingual signage equal in size and prominence. While some of the symbols used on the English poster communicate the message effectively without the need for words, other symbols are more ambiguous.

The right to write: Covid-19 care and resistance

More common than bilingual or trilingual Covid signs in West Vancouver are handmade artifacts indirectly related to Covid, containing symbols together with English slogans, known as ‘language objects’. While people in many places around the world displayed pictures of rainbows and hearts in their windows or on front doors, West Vancouverites tended to create signs of care, solidarity and hope in public spaces rather than in private homes. Slogans such as ‘smile’, ‘love’, ‘you’re the best’ appeared on objects in the environment, like stones or trees. The ‘language objects’ in Figure 6 serve no informational or utilitarian purpose, rather they portray messages of care, hope, positivity and solidarity during difficult times.

Figure 5: Trilingual signage (English, Chinese, and Persian) at the West Vancouver Memorial Library

Such language objects were monolingual (English only) with symbols such as hearts and smiles.

Another way in which the public interacted with the linguistic landscape of West Vancouver, was through grassroots homemade signs in the form of monolingual (English only) posters taped to trees, lamp posts or walls in public places. Such posters tended to voice political or philosophical viewpoints on the pandemic, as seen in Figure 7.

Concerns for freedom were expressed openly by ‘talking back to the linguistic landscape’, whereby residents felt they had the ‘right to write’ in public spaces. Such voices of resistance to Covid-related safety measures and restrictions seen in the West Vancouver linguistic landscape stood in sharp contrast the Covid linguistic landscapes in Abu Dhabi (where I had spent the first year of the pandemic) in which signs of resistance to Covid safety rules were notably absent.

Toward Covid signage accurately reflecting multilingual ecologies

Figure 6: Language objects in Ambleside Park showing care, positivity, and solidarity

In studies conducted during the onset of the pandemic in 2020, lack of access to information in minority languages was reported in a wide variety of international contexts. Those not proficient in the dominant language of a given context were often found to be excluded from receiving safety information in public spaces.

During the onset of the pandemic, the immediate need for swift assemblance of safety signage led sign-makers to use the linguistic resources they had at hand, often resulting in English being the default choice. However, a year later, Covid signage remains heavily skewed in favor of monolingual signage in dominant languages such as English, in the case of West Vancouver. Only federal Covid signs are bilingual (English and French), and there appear to be few efforts by community members to translate English Covid signs into commonly spoken languages.

Figure 7: Monolingual (English only) grassroots sign voicing resistance to Covid-19 restrictions

For inclusivity goals to be better met, language on signage needs to match languages spoken in specific speech communities. Especially during a crisis, the importance of addressing the mismatch between the language chosen for public communication and the language repertoires of the target audience is amplified with regard to safety as well as a sense of belonging and value during difficult times.

Lessons learned from the pandemic’s first two years include the need for language on Covid signage to accurately reflect multilingual ecologies in highly diverse contexts for greater safety, care, and inclusion, especially amidst current Omicron concerns.

More on Covid-19 crisis communication

Keep up with all our Covid-19 crisis communication coverage on the Language on the Move Covid-19 archives.

The translator of the Persian version of Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice, Dr Saeed Rezaei

The Persian translation of Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice (2016, Oxford University Press) has just been published by the Iranian publishing house Neveeseh. Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice has been translated into Persian by Dr Saeed Rezaei. Dr Rezaei is an assistant professor in Applied Linguistics at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran and was a visiting researcher at Macquarie University in 2012/2013. A feature post about his research interests from back then is available here on Language on the Move.

Most of the research featured in Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice and the case studies that examine the relationship between language and social justice are based in Anglophone contexts and/or in societies constituted as liberal democracies. Iran is neither but, even so, the broad questions raised in the book – how language serves to stratify society and how it mediates access to social goods – are pertinent there, as elsewhere, irrespective of which national language predominates and which political system is espoused.

One of the aims of Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice has been to broaden readers’ understanding precisely of the diversity of relationships in which language and justice can find themselves. In the English original, some of the case studies came from contexts likely to be unfamiliar to the Western reader – such as the linguistic landscape study of the Doulab Cemetery in Tehran, which I use to exemplify the territorial principle. For the Iranian reader, I hope that this case study, in particular, will not only have the ring of the familiar but also serve as a reality check on the overall argument.

Cover of the Persian translation. As for the English original, the cover image was drawn by artist Sadami Konchi

It has also been my hope that Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice would contribute to a new sociolinguistic research agenda examining the relationship between language and social justice. In this regard, it is fitting that the first translation of the book should be into Persian because the field has much to learn from the sociolinguistics of multilingual Iran – both past and present.

I have personally learned so much from my visits to the country and my interactions with its people, language, and culture. Some of the most pertinent of these lessons I have tried to share throughout the book, such as the case studies in the final chapter. The final chapter features “real linguistic utopias”, where multilingualism and social cohesion do not conflict. One example comes from 17^th century Isfahan, a highly diverse and multilingual city, which flourished as a transnational center of trade and learning. Another one that did not make it into Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice (but into the second edition of Intercultural Communication, Edinburgh University Press, 2017) is the cross-cultural brokering in the friendship of Persian and Mongol politicians in 13^th century Iran. In an age when our own political leaders seem to be more inclined towards erecting new borders, strengthening old ones and tearing down bridges, the friendship of the Mongol Bolad and the Persian Rashid al-Din, which helped to connect east and west Asia, is particularly instructive to consider.

It is in a similar spirit of conversation and engagement that Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice was written and conceived as part of a broader conversation about linguistic diversity and social justice. In the English original, this is signaled through the many invitations to the reader to join the conversation on Language on the Move. In the Persian version, the spirit of conversation and exchange also materializes through the very fact of the translation.

I am immensely grateful to Dr Saeed Rezaei for initiating the translation and for his persistence and hard work in bringing it to fruition. I hope the Persian translation will be as well-received as the English original was; and I will be looking forward to the conversations it starts and continues and to seeing the directions they take. Even more so, as dark clouds gather once more over Iran, I hope that the book will find a Persian-language readership in a time of peace and prosperity.

The ebook version of the Persian translation of Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice is available here.

***NEW*** [May 20, 2019]: The preface of the Persian translation of Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice can be downloaded here.

***EVEN NEWER*** [July 23, 2019]: Listen to an interview with Dr Rezaei about the book on Radio Farhang here (part 1) and here (part 2).

Language on the Move Content in Persian

• انگلیسی یا فارسی؟
• جادوی انگلیسی
• نام های تجاریِ نویسه گردان
• !دست از سر چینگلیش بردارید
• ظلم زبان
• انگلیسی، آن نا-زبان
• علایمِ هشدار دهنده یِ چند زبانه
• مردها، زبان انگلیسی و رومانسِ بین المللی
• تمسخر لهجه ها
• آموزش سوپرمارکتی زبان های خارجی
• هشدار: انگلیسی جهانی ممکن است به سلامت روانی شما آسیب برساند
• وی نات شیپ تو راشا

Native and non-native teachers at Lord Harris’ School, Royapett, Madras, 1865 (Source: British Library)

For some time now, a debate has been raging in TESOL about the relative merits of native and non-native speakers as English language teachers. While many people in the field are critical of the continued dominance of native speakers as “ideal” teachers, proposals for change have largely been ineffectual.

True, job ads asking for “native speakers” are now widely considered discriminatory and the relative strengths of both groups are spruiked at conferences. However, none of this has much changed the fact that institutions, students and parents, by and large, continue to prefer TESOL teachers who they consider to be native speakers; that such teachers are oftentimes paid more and hired into more secure employment; and that teachers considered non-native are regularly subject to micro-aggressions such as having their expertise called into question.

Is there a more effective way to overcome native speaker hegemony other than to educate people about the native speaker fallacy?

Absolutely. It has been done before. The following object lesson of native speaker subordination comes from an unlikely source, namely the British Empire and specifically the East India Company.

Persian – India’s power code

To understand this case study, a bit of historical context is required: when the British brought the Indian subcontinent under colonial control, they displaced an existing state, the Mughal Empire. The Mughals’ state language was Persian. In the 18^th century, when the British rapidly expanded and consolidated their possessions on the subcontinent, Persian had been India’s written language, its power code and its lingua franca for over three centuries. In other words, Persian was the Moghuls’ “technology of governance” (Fisher, 2012, pp. 328f.).

Officer of the East India Company being coached in Persian by a private tutor (Source: Massey & Massey, 1968, p. 473)

In order to rule India, it was therefore essential to know Persian. And Indians knew Persian. Britons did not.

As the East India Company tightened its grip on India, it approached this problem gradually by first replacing Indian speakers of Persian with British speakers of Persian and, further down the track, replacing Persian with English as the language of the state. It is the first step in this process that concerns us here: how did the East India Company go about replacing Indians with Britons as privileged knowers of Persian?

Establishing a Persian language teaching industry

Initially, British colonial officials who wanted to learn Persian (or any other Indian language) were largely left to their own devices and such language study was a matter of private enterprise. Many hired Indian language teachers as private tutors.

Gradually, Persian language learning became more formalized and dedicated language training institutes were established. The most important of these were Fort William College in Calcutta, and, back home in Britain, Haileybury Imperial Service College and Addiscombe Military Seminary. These institutes all opened in the first decade of the 19^th century.

Since the 18^th century, Persian-speaking Indian elites had increasingly shifted from working for the Mughal Empire and its ever smaller and more fragmented successor states to accepting employment from the British. For many of them this meant becoming language teachers.

In India, teaching was a highly respected profession and Indian teachers of Persian initially assumed a high-status position vis-à-vis their British students. They were in a bull market, or so it must have seemed: Persian language teaching became ever more widespread and profitable, not only in the colony, but also in Britain, where middle-class families clamoured for an education that would ensure their sons’ future in lucrative colonial positions. Just how profitable the teaching of Indian languages was can be seen from the autobiography of one such language teacher, Lutfullah:

I regularly held the profession of a teacher of the Persian, Hindustani, Arabic, and Marathi languages to the new comers from England, from time to time, and place to place, as their duty obliged and caprice induced them to go. Upwards of one hundred pupils studied with me during the above period, and none of my scholars returned unlaureled from the Government examination committees. I have a book of most flattering certificates in my possession, and I may say that I was better off than many by following this profession. (Lutfullah, 1858, p. 139)

Haileybury College (Source: Wikipedia)

In the colonial logic of the assumed inferiority of the colonized, high-status Indian language teachers with a good income soon became the targets of envy and efforts to undermine them got underway. Returned colonial officials, in particular, wanted teaching positions for themselves rather than see them occupied by Indians. Given their clout and connections, many of them managed to be recruited into Persian language teaching positions in the new imperial training institutes. That their language competence was sometimes almost non-existent did not matter.

The Professor of Oriental Literature at Addiscombe, for instance, was one John Shakespear, who not only drew a professorial salary but supplemented his income by publishing numerous textbooks and teaching aids. His most successful textbook was one of the earliest grammars of Urdu, A Grammar of the Hindustani Language. First published in 1813, it was reprinted and re-issued in new editions for almost half a century. The above-mentioned Lutfullah met Shakespear during his visit to England in 1844 and describes his encounter as follows:

[I] had the honour of being introduced to three men of learning, viz., John Shakespear, the author of the Hindustani Dictionary […]. Knowing the first-named gentleman to be the author of a book in our language, I addressed to him a very complimentary long sentence in my own language. But, alas! I found that he could not understand me, nor could he utter a word in that language in which he had composed several very useful books. (Lutfullah, 1858, p. 389)

Subordinating native speakers

The above example can leave no doubt that the linguistic qualifications of Indians were superior to those of British language teachers. Even so, the former were excluded almost entirely from the enterprise of Persian language teaching, well before that enterprise was abandoned entirely in favour of making Indians learn English.

Addiscombe Military Seminary, c. 1859 (Source: Wikipedia)

The subordination of native speaker teachers was achieved in two ways, namely through arguments related to teacher identity and through a reorganization of language teaching.

The arguments related to teacher identity basically stated that Muslim men were unfit to teach Christian boys and young men. The board of Haileybury College, for instance, decided in 1816 that “the linguistic advantages of having a ‘native speaker’ teach British students was outweighed by the alleged disruption these Muslim Indian men had on the students’ moral education” (Fisher, 2012, p. 344). As in other language training institutions, Indian teachers were replaced with British teachers.

Reorganization of language teaching meant that Indian ways of language teaching (through the study of literature) were devalued in favour of British ways of language teaching (through the study of grammars and dictionaries). While the former approach requires a high level of language competence of the teacher, the latter does not.

Furthermore, Indian teachers were reframed as specialists in pronunciation, and pronunciation as a language skill was marginalized. Instead of hiring them into teacher roles, Indian teachers were offered positions as drill masters and teaching assistants of British teachers. The latter were fashioned as experts both in methods of language teaching and in the grammar skills that were now considered the essential test of language competence.

By the 1840s, all Indian language teachers had been removed from imperial language training institutes and the newly established university chairs in Persian, Arabic and other oriental languages all went to Britons. Any Indian language teachers who remained in Britain were relegated to the private tutoring market, which was shrinking, too, as a knowledge of Persian and other Indian languages became increasingly irrelevant to pursuing a career in the colonies.

Fort William College (Source: Navrang India)

Who is to be master?

As is obvious from this brief account, the battle between Indians and Britons over who was a better teacher of Indian languages was fought on linguistic terrain only on the surface. Some of the British 19^th century superstars of oriental language teaching such as John Shakespear obviously had serious linguistic deficits. That did not keep them from becoming privileged knowers of colonial languages. A holistic knowledge of the language, cultural competence and conversational fluency were all devalued in favour of a focus on methods and a narrow understanding of language proficiency as grammatical mastery.

Ironically, once Persian was out of the way as the power code of India and the global English language teaching enterprise got underway, the rules of the game were re-written yet again. What we consider desirable linguistic competence today is to a significant degree shaped by the strengths and weaknesses of the new privileged language knowers, native speakers of English.

References

Eastwick, E. B. (Ed.) (1858). Autobiography of Lutfullah, a Mohamedan Gentleman; and the transactions with his fellow-creatures; interspersed with remarks on the habits, customs, and character of the people with whom he had to deal. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Fisher, M. H. (2012). Teaching Persian as an Imperial Language in India and in England during the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries. In B. Spooner & W. L. Hanaway (Eds.), Literacy in the Persianate world : writing and the social order (pp. 328-358). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Massey, R., & Massey, J. (1968). Lutfullah in London, 1844. History Today, 18(7), 473-479.

Multilingual “Welcome” sign in a shopping mall in Munich, Germany

Have you recently seen a “welcome” sign? They constitute a strange genre: ever more ubiquitous on the one hand, yet utterly false and insincere – how can you be “greeted” by a piece of stuff? – on the other.

Whenever I see one of these “welcome” signs, I am reminded of an anecdote told by a colleague who had travelled in Japan in the 1970s: he had visited Japan for an academic conference and added a few days of sightseeing. For the latter, he had rented a car to drive around the countryside. It was the days before GPS and mobile phones and satellite tracking; all he had was an old-fashioned paper map. The map had all the place names in the Latin script while the signs he saw next to the road were all in Japanese. Illiterate in Japanese, he had no way of matching a name on the map with a name on a sign.

Sure enough, he got lost. Because some signs had the place name in both Japanese and Latin scripts, he just kept on driving in the hope of finding such a bilingual sign to regain his bearings. To his mounting frustration, the only non-Japanese signs he encountered for a long time said: “Welcome!” He knew he was “welcome” but he didn’t know where – or even what – it was he was welcomed to …

Multilingual “Welcome” sign in a heritage village in Abu Dhabi, UAE

A similar story is unlikely to happen today. Not only because of the advent of GPS and Google maps but also because directional signage outside the Anglophone world and particularly in countries that do not use the Latin script has become bilingual and largely follows the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals. Article 14 stipulates that “The inscription of words on informative signs […] in countries not using the Latin alphabet shall be both in the national language and in the form of a transliteration into the Latin alphabet reproducing as closely as possible the pronunciation in the national language.” As more and more countries have become signatories mono-script directional signage outside the Latin-script world have largely become a thing of the past.

Multilingual “Welcome” sign in a shopping mall in Los Angeles, California

In fact, it is not only directional signage that has become bi- or multilingual but the same is true of “welcome” signs, which must be one of the most multilingual genres on the planet.

Any self-respecting institution today says “welcome” multilingually in a show of banal cosmopolitanism.

“Banal cosmopolitanism” is based off the much better-known concept of “banal nationalism”, a frequent topic here on Language on the Move. Banal nationalism refers to the mundane discourses – flags, maps, national references, etc. – that enact national belonging in everyday life. Similarly, banal cosmopolitanism refers to mundane discourses that enact globalization in everyday life. Banal cosmopolitanism is apparent in the “mediatization and consumption of spatially distant places, signifiers of cultural diversity, and opening up of lifestyles to new experiential spaces and horizons” (Jaworski, 2015, p. 220).

One linguistic form that banal cosmopolitanism may take is the excessive use of new letterforms, punctuation marks, diacritics, and tittles, as Adam Jaworski shows in a 2015 paper entitled “Globalese.” Their use, particularly in brand and shop names, serves to create “novel, foreignized, visual-linguistic forms increasingly detached from their ‘original’ ethno-national languages” (p. 217). Detached from their national and local linguistic context, they point to somewhere else, somewhere in the realm of the global.

English “Welcome” graffiti in Ramsar, Iran

Multilingual “welcome” signs are another such mundane index of globalization and banal cosmopolitanism. Multilingual “welcome” signs feature prominently in consumption spaces – as the examples from shopping malls show and tourist destinations show. However, they are not exclusive to those and are increasingly popular also in universities and similar institutional spaces that want to mark themselves as internationalized, diverse and inclusive.

That all this indexing of cosmopolitanism is indeed “banal” and only runs skin deep is best exemplified by those multilingual “welcome” signs that get one or more of their versions wrong. And I don’t mean home-made signs in developing countries that get their English spelling wrong. What I mean are huge signs professionally produced on durable materials that scream “welcome” in dozens of languages – certainly more languages than the designers of the sign could master or could be bothered to verify the translation for.

The versions that go wrong most frequently are those that use right-to-left scripts.

Multilingual “Welcome” sign, University of Limerick, Ireland

If a designer gets the Arabic and Persian translation of “Welcome” from Google Translate and then copies and pastes it into a selection of other translations, their word processor is likely to re-order the letters from left to right; as happened in this sign at the University of Limerick.

As a result of this linguistically-uninformed process, the Persian version, for instance, which should be “خوش آمدید” is scrambled to read something like the equivalent of “emoclew”; a line later (2^nd before last), half of the word, “آمدید” has been repeated, leaving a truncated version similar to “come”; again scrambled to actually spell something like “emoc”.

Examples such as these are not at all rare: in a previous post, we featured an apron that combines both banal nationalism and banal cosmopolitanism in one item and where the Arabic version of “Australia” is spelled backwards.

So who are the recipients of these multilingual “welcome” signs? The signs are intended to send a message of cosmopolitanism, internationalization, diversity and inclusion – but it’s a message that is intended for the dominant population so that they can feel good about themselves. If a reader were not to speak English, the multilingual “welcome” featured here are just as useful as they were to the driver lost in the Japan. And if you are a reader of one of the languages that come in the garbled version, it’s adding insult to injury.

Correction: An earlier version of this post stated that the University of Limerick’s “Welcome” sign was intended to welcome members of an international conference devoted to multilingualism. That was incorrect. Attendees of that conference posed beneath the banner and shared it on social media – that’s how I came across the image – but the banner was not associated with the conference.

Reference

Jaworski, A. (2015). Globalese: A New Visual-Linguistic Register. Social Semiotics, 25(2), 217-235. doi: 10.1080/10350330.2015.1010317

Fliers for Persian community events (Persian Library Parramatta, Nov 2010)

Editor’s note: In the second instalment in our series “Explorations in Language Shaming”, Dr Shiva Motaghi-Tabari examines children’s attitudes towards the perception of home languages other than English in Australia highlighting that home-language use may often be associated with a sense of embarrassment.

***

Home-language (HL) maintenance as a concern for many migrant families has recently gained prominence. Much of the research has focused mainly on the role of parents and HL educators in child HL learning processes, while the role of children in this effect remained almost invisible. In my doctoral research on “Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant Families”, I demonstrated that children’s language attitudes, which in turn are influenced by language ideologies and wider social structures, can have significant impacts on their HL maintenance.

In fact, the broad impetus for my research germinated from my own observation of my child’s language learning and use, and my engagements with other parents in a similar situation since we came to Australia in 2008. Like many migrant parents coming from a non-English-speaking background, maintaining my child’s HL has been a concern in our new home in Australia. When we first came, my daughter was around seven years old. At the time, she knew some English, as we had sent her to language schools since she was four years old back in Iran. After arrival, I observed how quickly her English language, particularly her conversational skills, were progressing. As her English language progressed, I began to wonder if it might not be a good idea to use some English at home. After all, her father and I also needed to improve our English communication skills …

At the same time, we did not wish to put our daughter’s Persian at risk. Her Persian maintenance was not only important to us, but it was also a promise to her grandparents who relentlessly reminded us of the importance of preserving their grandchild’s Persian language. For this very reason, we also sent her to a Persian Saturday School in Sydney so that she would become literate in the language.

In our search for effective ways of managing the two languages, Persian and English, we heard many parents’ stories of success or failure related to their HL maintenance. For some of the parents, despite their investments of time and money, they found it challenging to get their children to learn and use their HL. Some of them blamed the Community Language School teachers for not being able to teach the HL properly, and some of them blamed themselves for not spending enough time to practice the language with their children. Some of them also seemed confused as they had been advised by their children’s mainstream teachers to speak English with their children.

Eventually, these observations shaped my interest in doing further research in the area, and that’s how my PhD research ‘Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant Families’ came into existence. That my research struck a chord is obvious from the fact that it won the 2017 Michael Clyne Prize. The Michael Clyne Prize is awarded annually by the Australian Linguistics Society for the best postgraduate research thesis in immigrant bilingualism and language contact.

‘Bidirectionality’ in parent-child interactions is a notion that I have borrowed from family studies and extended to the field of second language learning. In a bidirectional model, the process of socialisation of a child into a set of language and cultural rules involves not only a parent-to-child direction of influence but also a child-to-parent direction. Central to the bidirectional model is the concept of agency. Agency in this framework means “considering individuals as actors with the ability to make sense of the environment, initiate change, and make choices” (Kuczynski, 2003, p. 9). The core assumption in this framework is that both parents and children as active agents interpret and thereby reconstruct social messages (Kuczynski, Parkin, & Pitman, 2014, p. 138). This means that, in the field of language learning, children, like adults, adopt a certain way of thinking about languages based on the language ideologies they encounter in their daily lives. Based on these social perceptions, they make choices about what languages to learn and use. Therefore, to find more effective ways of HL maintenance, it is essential to bring children’s language attitudes and practices to the forefront alongside parents’ language attitudes and investments, and HL teachers and their teaching methods.

Despite parents’ wishes and efforts, children often show a disinclination to learn and use the home language, the language of their family, relatives and loved ones. Instead, they often tend to prefer English, as one of my child participants said: ‘I mostly speak Iranian, but I prefer English’. Reasons for this preference that the children gave to me included the following: ‘Because Persian is so hard’ or ‘it is Australia!’

It is true that for many children, their limited HL skills could make it difficult for them to communicate in that language. However, the same child who felt that Persian was too hard also made the comment ‘it is Australia!’ This adds another dimension to children’s choice of English as their preferred language. In effect, in a process of linguistic and cultural mainstreaming through the educational system and social practices, the dominant language and culture are inscribed as legitimate while other languages are devalued. In circumstances where communicative norms are constituted into a homogenised form, it comes as no surprise that children who do care about belonging and acceptance, internalise and reproduce the underlying message that ‘to be an Australian, one must speak English’. For them, using their HL may be perceived as a marker of lack of belonging or difference, and ultimately, making them feel a sense of shame and embarrassment over different forms of language other than what is seen as ‘normal’, as in this example:

Child participant: I get embarrassed [laughs] to speak Persian.
Shiva: Why is that?
Child participant: Because I don’t want anybody to think I’m weird.

Under circumstances where children  feel that they may be viewed as ‘weird’ if they use their home language, it is obvious that they may not show much interest in practising that language; and so, they exert their agency in different ways to use their preferred language despite their parents’ wishes, as is evident from the following conversation I had with two children:

Shiva: Then you are asked at home to speak in Persian?
Child participant 1: Yeah.
Child participant 2: A lot.
Child participant 1: Yeah.
Child participant 2: A lot.
[Both laugh] Shiva: And then you don’t?
Both [giggling] No! [more laughter] Shiva: No?
Child participant 1: maybe for one second, but then after that [laughs]

In sum, raising a child bilingually can be a difficult task when the onus is only on the family, particularly in a context where the value of the HL is not tangible for the children and is not acknowledged by the wider society. So, before any language instructions can be successful, children need to truly feel and understand the importance of preserving their home language alongside learning the English language. To achieve this, it is essential that families, community languages schools and mainstream schools come together around the same positive message: English is not the only language of Australia and bilingualism is cool and worth encouraging.

References

Kuczynski, L. (2003). Beyond Bidirectionality: Bilateral Conceptual Frameworks for Understanding Dynamics in Parent-Child Relations. In L. Kuczynski (Ed.), Handbook of dynamics in parent-child relations (pp. 3-24). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Kuczynski, L., Parkin, C. M., & Pitman, R. (2014). Socialization as Dynamic Process: A Dialectical, Transactional Perspective. In J. E. Grusec & P. D. Hastings (Eds.), Handbook of socialization: theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 135-157). New York; London: The Guilford Press.

Motaghi-Tabari, S. (2016). Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant Families. (PhD), Macquarie University. Available from http://languageonthemove.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Thesis_Shiva_Motaghi-Tabari_BidirectionalLanguageLearning.pdf

Our newest PhD, Dr Shiva Motaghi Tabari (3rd from left)

The Language on the Move team is proud to announce another freshly-minted PhD in our midst! Dr Shiva Motaghi Tabari graduated from Macquarie University yesterday and was awarded her PhD for a thesis about “Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant Families“. The thesis is available for open access via our PhD Hall of Fame. Congratulations, Shiva!

Abstract

The process of migration to and settlement in a new country entails linguistic, cultural and identity changes and adjustments. These changes and adjustments at an individual level are related to changes and adjustments in the family. This thesis offers a qualitative exploration of such changes and adjustments in migrant families in Australia by focusing on their language learning and use processes.

Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, the study draws on concepts from family studies, particularly the notion of ‘bidirectionality’, as well as sociocultural theories related to second language acquisition within the poststructuralist paradigm. The emphasis is on the ways in which language learning and use in the family relates to wider social and political contexts and language ideologies.

Data for the study come from semi-structured in-depth interviews with nineteen migrant families of Persian background in Australia, including thirty-three parents and twenty-one children.

Overall, the findings of the study show that language socialisation processes within the family in migration contexts are complex and intricately interwoven with parental and child language beliefs and attitudes, which in turn are influenced by language ideologies and attitudes prevalent in the wider society.

Specifically, the research addresses four research questions. First, parents’ experiences of language learning and use before migration are examined. Findings demonstrate how participants’ multiple desires for English learning were socially shaped, and how they invested into English language learning at different points in time, particularly with the prospect of an imagined future in Australia and upward socioeconomic mobility. Second, parents’ experiences of language learning and use after migration are explored. Findings suggest that under the influence of ideological forces in the wider society, particularly those related to the ‘native/non-native speaker’ dichotomy, learners may perpetually be perceived, by themselves and by others, as deficient language speakers and peripheral members in the new society.

After analysing parental language learning and use experiences, children’s experiences of language learning and use are examined. Children’s English language learning trajectories are diverse and relate to the degrees of English competence and the age of participants at the time of arrival. Children exercise their agency in different ways to learn the new language and to become a legitimate member in their new communities of practice. Finally, the thesis explores how parents’ and children’s language learning and use intersect. Language ideologies and the imbalanced values attributed to languages along with inequitable power relations determine the conditions under which parents struggle to achieve bilingual outcomes both for themselves and for their children.

Overall, the study argues for a holistic approach to investigations of language socialisation processes in migrant families and problematises the ways in which language beliefs, attitudes, and practices of parents and their children are shaped by the wider social and ideological context. The study has multiple implications for both adult and child language learning, parent-child interactions in migration contexts, and Australian migration studies.

Advances in sociolinguistic knowledge

Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant Families advances sociolinguistic knowledge in at least three distinct ways:

Conceptually, the focus on bidirectionality in language learning is highly innovative given that language learning continues to be widely seen as something the individual undertakes. Usually, where language learning directions are considered, they are seen to flow from teacher to student or from parent to child. By examining how families engage in language learning as a group and by also considering child influences on parental language learning the thesis breaks new ground conceptually.

Methodologically, the holistic approach to data collection from children and parents, both individually and in groups, extends qualitative interview-based research to include an interactional dimension that is often missing from this kind of approach.

Sociologically, the research advances our knowledge of Persian-speaking skilled migrants to Australia, an emerging but rapidly growing community. By examining pre- and post-migration language learning experiences the thesis illuminates the ideological and practical bases for the language learning trajectories of this group once they have settled in Australia.

“…and in the end, Britain, which had colonized the world, destroyed itself in fantasies that it was being colonized in turn” — historians.

— Ted Scheinman (@Ted_Scheinman) June 24, 2016

Of course, this spectacular act of self-harming is more like a murder-suicide in that the damage done will not be contained to Britain and affect the rest of the world in ways that we cannot yet know but that look distinctly unpleasant for Europe and “the West”:

With a single vote, England just screwed us all https://t.co/1RT6LjEAjp

— Patrick Park (@patricktpark) June 24, 2016

If Britain is self-destructing, what will happen to English as a global language? Have we just witnessed the beginning of the end of the global hegemony of English? Some have already started to question the role of English in the EU after the British will no longer be part of the union.

Let’s examine how other global languages have lost influence.

To begin with, for a language to rise to importance as a transnational language, it seems inevitable that its native speakers successfully pursue imperial expansion. That is how English spread and that is how other lingua francas acquired their status. However, history also shows that a transnational language does not necessarily go into decline with the decline of the empire that spread the language. Indeed, English has shown no signs of decline since the end of the British Empire in the mid 20^th-century; on the contrary, global English language learning has gone from strength to strength since then.

When an empire dies, the language of the empire may simply cease to serve as a transnational language but may still serve as the native language of the group who used to be dominant. Obviously, English will continue to be used as mother tongue in England etc. even after its speakers have shot their own political and economic influence in the foot. What is interesting is whether speakers of other languages will continue to embrace English as enthusiastically as they have to date.

In his examination of the fate of lingua francas after the fall of their empires, Nicholas Ostler argues that their survival as transnational languages “depends on the successful renewal of the marketing campaign, implicit or explicit, that has supported its rise to currency […] the language [needs] to find itself another raison d’être” (Ostler 2010, p. 174).

(c) Axel Scheffler

Latin, for instance, saw its greatest triumph as a transnational language after the fall of the Roman Empire. Its continued success after the Romans proved themselves incapable of constructively addressing the population movements and socio-economic and military challenges of their time, depended on two consecutive new purposes: first, Latin became the language of the Catholic Church, which gave it a new lease on life as a transnational language of religion for almost two millennia. Second, from the Renaissance into the 19^th century Latin also served as a transnational language of education and higher learning in universities across Europe and beyond.

Persian provides another example: after Iran fell to the Arab invasion, Persian became the language of the army that spread Islam into Central and South East Asia, and was then taken up by Turks, Mongols and, in fact, all Muslim rulers of the region as the administrative language of their realms.

Latin and Persian thrived as transnational languages for well over a millennium after their native speakers had lost military-political and socio-economic clout. In the end, Latin as a transnational language faded away before the ascendancy of national languages. The end of transnational Persian came more abruptly as the administrative structures of Central and Southeast Asia were dismantled by the British and Russian Empires in the 19^th century.

What does this mean for transnational English after Brexit? English has already been repurposed as the transnational language of multinational corporations and international business. So, we have not seen the beginning of the end of English as a transnational language and it may well thrive for a long time to come.

What we have seen is another nail in the coffin of native speaker supremacy. Native speakers have just chosen to make themselves even more irrelevant to the story of English.

Reference

Ostler, N. (2010). The Last Lingua Franca: English until the Return of Babel. London: Penguin.

Rashid al-Din Monument in Soltaniyeh, Iran (Source: Wikipedia)

Recently, I signed a contract for a revised second edition of my 2011 book Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction to be published in 2017. One way in which I am planning to extend the book is to have a greater focus on cultural mediators. What are the stories, experiences and practices of people who act as brokers between languages and cultures?

In some cases, people are pushed into the role of cultural mediators out of necessity, as is the case with child cultural and linguistic mediators. Others take on the roles of cultural brokers as an act of public service. In an age when most of our own political leaders seem to be more inclined towards erecting new borders, strengthening old ones and tearing down bridges, it is instructive to consider the case of two 13^th century statesmen whose friendship helped to connect east and west Asia: the Mongol Bolad and the Persian Rashid al-Din.

Rashid al-Din

Of the two, Rashid al-Din is today the better-known; as the author of the Jāme’ al-Tawārikh (“Universal History”) he is credited with having been “the first world historian” (Boyle 1971).

Rashid al-Din was born around 1250 CE into a Jewish family in Hamadān in north-west Iran. At the age of twenty-one or thirty (different accounts exist in different sources; see Kamola 2012), he converted to Islam and around the same time he entered the service of the then-ruler of Iran, the Il-Khan Abaqa (1265-81) as court physician. Under Abaqa’s grandson Il-Khan Ghazan (1295-1304) Rashid al-Din became vizier, one of the most influential roles in the state. Rashid al-Din also served Ghazan’s son and successor Öljeitü (1304-16). After Öljeitü’s death he became the victim of a court intrigue and was put to death in 1317, when he was around seventy years old.

During his long career he served his kings in many capacities: as physician, head of the royal household, military and general adviser, the mastermind of far-reaching fiscal and agricultural reforms, and, through his writing, as chief ideologue and propagandist of the Il-Khanids. In short, Rashid al-Din was a powerbroker, who did very well for himself and the realm he served:

He had become the owner of vast estates in every corner of the Il-Khan’s realm: orchards and vineyards in Azerbaijan, date-palm plantations in Southern Iraq, arable land in Western Anatolia. The administration of the state was almost a private monopoly of his family: of his fourteen sons eight were governors of provinces, including the whole of Western Iran, Georgia, Iraq and the greater part of what is now Turkey. Immense sums were at his disposal for expenditure on public and private enterprises. (Boyle 1971, p. 20)

Portrait of Kublai Khan (Source: Wikipedia)

Bolad

Thousands of miles to the east, Bolad’s career was very similar to that of Rashid al-Din: Bolad was about ten years older than Rashid al-Din and born around 1240 somewhere in Mongolia. His father was a man named Jürki, a member of the Dörben, a Mongolian tribe, who had submitted to Genghis Khan in 1204. Jürki quickly rose through the ranks of the imperial guard. In addition to his military distinction as a “Commander of a Hundred in the Personal Thousand” of Genghis Khan, he also became a ba’ruchi (“cook”) in the imperial household. While “cook” may not sound like much of a rank, in the Mongolian system this household position carried great prestige and showed close personal ties with the ruler (Allsen 1996, p. 8).

As a result of his father’s position, little Bolad was assigned to the service of Genghis Khan’s grandson Kublai Khan at age eight or nine. His education included the military arts and Chinese language and civilization. Bolad, too, forged a distinguished administrative career at the Yuan court. As he grew older, his duties and assignments included formulating court ceremonies, educating young Mongolians who entered the imperial service, and organizing the “Censorate,” the investigative arm of government. He became Head of the Bureau of Agriculture, which he helped establish; took on the role of Vice-Commissioner of Military Affairs; and headed a major anti-corruption investigation. His diverse appointments close to the centre of power at Kublai Khan’s court earned him the Chinese title chengxiang, “chancellor.”

In the spring of 1283, Bolad was appointed Kublai Khan’s ambassador to the Il-Khanids. The journey from Kublai Khan’s capital Khanbaliq (Dadu; modern Beijing) to the Il-Khan’s court in Tabriz took more than one year and Bolad and his embassy arrived in late 1284. He was supposed to return to China in 1285 but hostile forces made it impossible for a man of his rank to travel. He therefore stayed in Iran for the final twenty-eight years of his life. In addition to the role of ambassador, Bolad there assumed the role of chief advisor to the Il-Khan. During Öljeitü’s reign he became third minister and was in charge of logistics during a number of military campaigns. Active until well into his seventies, Bolad died in 1313 while he was in command of the northern garrisons.

Like Rashid al-Din, Bolad was a power broker. He distinguished himself not only at one but at two courts. Like Rashid al-Din, Bolad and his family, too, acquired significant wealth in their service to the Mongolian empire.

The context: the Yuan and Il-Khanid courts

Expansion of the Mongolian Empire, 1206-1294 (Source: Wikipedia)

Rashid al-Din and Bolad obviously met and became friends at the Il-Khanid court. But what was the broader context of their encounter?

After the death of Möngke Khan, a brother of Kublai Khan’s, in 1259, the unity of the Mongolian empire Genghis Khan had forged was permanently broken and the descendants of Genghis Khan fell into various succession wars. Kublai Khan held strong in Yuan China. The Il-Khanid line in Iran, founded by his brother Hülegü, formally acknowledged Kublai Khan’s sovereignty. Between these two allies, the Genghizid lines in Central Asia and Russia established various autonomous regional khanates, including the famous Golden Horde. These were at various times allied in various ways, at war with each other in various ways, and, particularly relevant here, often at war with China and Iran.

As nomadic aristocracy ruling two realms with a settled agrarian population and ancient civilizations, the Yuan in China and the Il-Khanids in Iran faced similar sets of issues: how would nomadic warriors be able to rule these complex agrarian societies?

Kublai Khan understood early that he would need Chinese support. His own Chinese language skills were not strong and he relied on interpreters in interactions with Chinese advisors (Fuchs 1946). However, he did seek out Chinese advisors and, more importantly, initiated the bilingual and bicultural education of young Mongolian courtiers such as Bolad. Bolad developed an intercultural disposition and “his frequent and active support for the recommendations of the emperor’s Han advisers indicates that he found much to admire in Chinese civilization” (Allsen 1996, p. 9).

Map of the Il-Khanate, 1256-1353 (Source: Wikipedia)

It is unclear when and how Bolad learned Persian but on his long trip to Iran and for the first few years there, he was accompanied by an interpreter, a Syriac Christian in the employ of the Mongols, who is known in Chinese sources as Aixue (愛薛) and in Persian sources as Isa kelemchi (“Jesus the interpreter”) (Takahashi 2014, p. 43).

The actual linguistic repertoire of Aixue/Isa kelemchi is uncertain; and that is an indicator of the linguistic situation in the Il-Khanate, which was even more complex than that at the Yuan court.

The preferred languages of Il-Khan Ghazan, for instance, were Mongolian and Turkish. Additionally, he happily spoke Persian and Arabic with his courtiers. Furthermore, he reportedly understood Hindi, Kashmiri, Tibetan, Khitai, Frankish “and other languages” (Amitai-Preiss 1996, p. 27).

Rashid Al-Din wrote in Persian, Arabic and Hebrew; from his style, it can be assumed that he also had some knowledge of at least Mongolian, Turkish and Chinese (Findley 2004, p. 92).

In sum, the nomadic Mongolian conquerors, whose strengths was military, needed to integrate their culture with that of the ancient settled civilizations of China and Iran in order to maintain the empires they had gained. They did so by fostering a new class of cultural brokers. These could either be drawn from the Mongolian population and raised bilingually and biculturally, as in Bolad’s case; or recruited from the local population, as in Rashid al-Din’s case. The latter must have been far more numerous because the nomads obviously did not end up imposing their language and culture on China nor Iran.

Fusion of East and West

The World History of Rashid al-Din, Exhibition of the Edinburgh manuscript

Bolad and Rashid al-Din ended up not “only” mediating between the nomad conquerors and the settled societies they came to rule, but their friendship is an example of the deep connections between east and west Asia that were forged during that time:

Their friendship was, without question, a crucial link in the overall exchange process, for Rashid al-Din, a man of varied intellectual interests and tremendous energy, was one of the very few individuals among the Mongols’ sedentary subjects who fully appreciated and systematically exploited the cultural possibilities created by the empire. (Allsen, 1996, p. 12)

The Jāme’ al-Tawārikh presents the culmination of their interactions. These chronicles were the first-ever attempt to write a world history and include information about the Muslim dynasties, the Indians, Jews, Franks, Chinese, Turks, and Mongols. Much of what is today known about the history of Central Asia up to the 13^th century comes from the Jāme’ al-Tawārikh. This could not have been achieved without extensive collaboration, and Rashid al-Din says about Bolad that he had no rival “in knowledge of the genealogies of the Turkish tribes and the events of their history, especially that of the Mongols” (quoted from Allsen 1996, p. 13).

Inter alia, Bolad translated information from a now-lost Mongolian source, the Altan Debter (“Golden Book”). Access to the Altan Debter was forbidden to non-Mongols, and Rashid al-Din even describes how their collaboration proceeded in this case: Bolad, who, as a high-ranking Mongol, had access to the Altan Debter, would extract the desired information and then, “in the morning before taking up administrative chores,” dictate the Persian translation of the desired passages to Rashid al-Din (Allsen 1996, p. 13).

Il-Khan Hülegü and his queen, Doquz Khatun, a Syriac Christian, as depicted in a Jami’ al-Tawarikh manuscript (Source: Wikipedia)

Given the wide-ranging interests and experiences of the two men, it is not surprising that their collaboration was not restricted to history but took in many other fields, too. Principal among these is agriculture. Rashid al-Din also produced an agricultural text (Āthār va ahyā’; “Monuments and animals”), which shows considerable Chinese influence (see Allsen 1996, pp. 14ff. for details). During this time an agricultural model farm was also established in Tabriz and, on Ghazan’s orders, new strains of seeds were solicited from China and India. While the details of these cross-fertilizations have been lost in the shifting sands of time, it “can be asserted with confidence that a considerable body of information on Chinese agriculture was transmitted to Iran and that Bolad was the principal conduit” (Allsen 1996, p. 15).

The two men also collaborated in the introduction of paper money to Iran (which would have necessitated knowledge of block-printing, only available in China at the time); the translation of medicinal treatises and the implementation of aspects of Chinese medicine in the Tabriz hospital Rashid al-Din had founded; and, of course, food. Rashid al-Din, in fact, developed such a taste for the delights of Chinese cuisine that he had a Chinese chef recruited for his household.

The mountains between India and China, depicted in a Jami’ al-Tawarikh manuscript (Source: Wikipedia)

The intense friendship of Bolad and Rashid al-Din is the story of a meeting of like-minded individuals who came together across what might seem a vast chasm of cultural difference. Their wide-ranging interests and intercultural dispositions allowed them to contribute extensively – and deeply – to the fusion of Asian cultures. The results were new heights of achievement in various spheres of life, as Basil Gray, the keeper of Oriental antiquities at the British Museum between 1946 and 1969, has argued with reference to painting:

The paradox which results from a survey of the history of painting in Persia before the Mongol invasions, is that it had not yet achieved the expressive and imaginative force which was to give it its special and unique quality only after it had come in contact with Chinese drawing. This is the agent which seems to have freed the Persian genius from its subordination to the other arts of the book by a mysterious catalysis. […] The “house style” of Rashidiya [the scriptorium in Tabriz founded by Rashid al-Din] is the most thoroughgoing example of Chinese artistic penetration into Iran. In it there is not simply a question of Chinese motifs, but radical adoption of the Chinese vision. [quoted from Robinson 1980, p. 212]

That the East-West fusion enabled by the Mongolian empire was not a one-way street is best exemplified by Bolad’s name: born into a high-ranking Mongolian family, the child was given a Persian name. “Bolad” is the Mongolian version of Persian pulād (“steel”).

References

Allsen, T. T. (1996). Biography of a Cultural Broker, Bolad Ch’eng-Hsiang in China and Iran. In J. Raby & T. Fitzherbert (Eds.), The Court of the Il-Khans, 1290-1340 (pp. 7-22). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Amitai-Preiss, R. (1996). New Material from the Mamluk Sources for the Biography of Rashid Al-Din. In J. Raby & T. Fitzherbert (Eds.), The Court of the Il-Khans, 1290-1340 (pp. 23-37). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Boyle, J. (1971). Rashīd al-Dīn: The First World Historian Iran, 9, 19-26 DOI: 10.2307/4300435

Findley, C. V. (2004). The Turks in World History. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fuchs, W. (1946). Analecta: Zur mongolischen Uebersetzungsliteratur der Yuan-Zeit. Monumenta Serica, 11, 33-64.

Kamola, S. (2012). The Mongol Īlkhāns and Their Vizier Rashīd Al-Dīn. Iranian Studies, 45(5), 717-721. doi: 10.1080/00210862.2012.702557

Robinson, B. W. (1980). Rashid Al-Din’s World History: The Significance of the Miniatures. The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 112(2), 212-222.

Takahashi, H. (2014). Syriac as a Vehicle for Transmission of Knowledge across Borders of Empires Horizons, 5(1), 29-52.

Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken (Source: quotesnpoems.com)

It is not unusual for bilingual parents to experience a sense of bewilderment when it comes to language choice in the family. When raising a child in a language different from the one parents were socialised into, old truths and certainties quickly disappear. Studying language choice in migrant families, Pavlenko (2004) found that parents’ confusion can be related to language ideologies that see the first language as the language of emotions and the second language as the language of detachment. Consequently, parents are often torn between speaking their first language because it is supposed to enhance the emotional connection with their children and speaking the second language because it is supposed to be the language of the new country.

This sense of bewilderment is often expressed by Iranian migrant parents to Australia who I interviewed for my ongoing doctoral research into bidirectional language learning in migrant families. Mina and Mahmoud (all names are pseudonyms), for instance, adopted a monolingual Persian-only policy with their primary-school-aged daughter, but, at the same time, speak about their intention ‘to change the plan’:

مینا: چون اصولا در خانه قانون کردیم که همه فارسی حرف بزنیم.

محمود: فکر کنم برای improve زبان فارسی‌اش [دخترمان] خیلی عالی بود، ولی برای ما نه، از نظر انگلیسی خیلی و اتفاقا اخیرا ما=

مینا: =تصمیم گرفتیم تغییر بدیم این برنامه را.

محمود:مطمئنا من زبان انگلیسیم در حدی نیست که بخواهم خیلی ازاحساساتم را به زبان انگلیسی به خوبی الان بیان کنم براش.

مینا: من فکر می‌کنم قدری برایم سخت است بخوام switch کنم، تو خونه انگلیسی حرف بزنم.

Mina: Because, basically, we have set a rule at home that everyone should speak in Persian.

Mahmoud: I think it was excellent for [our daughter’s] Persian language improvement, but not for us, in terms of English, and in fact, recently we=

Mina: =we’ve decided to change this plan.

Mahmoud: Certainly my English is not at a level so that I would want to express many of my emotions to her in English as well as I am doing now [in Persian].

Mina: I think it’s a bit hard for me if I want to switch into, talk in English at home.

Like many parents in Pavlenko’s (2004) study, Mina and Mahmoud construct Persian as the ‘language of emotion’; their preferred language choice to ensure an intimate parent-child relationship. While this discourse reflects the perceptions of many parents, some parents may use their second language for various reasons such as making closer connections with their children or to be in control of the situation, as in Farhad and Farah’s case.

فرهاد: من کاری که کردم، دلیل اینکه من گفتم توی خارج از خونه، یا حداقل، تو خونه شاید اوایل یه زمان خاصی باهاشون [بچه هام] انگلیسی حرف بزنم، همین بود، بخاطر اینکه نمیخواستم از دنیای اینها فاصله بگیرم. میخواستم، همانطور که خب فارسی، اینا که خب حله، انگلیسی هم هست. بدونم اینا چی میگن، حرفاشون چیه.

فرح: ما خودمون را به اونا نزدیک میکنیم در عین حال سعی می‌کنیم که از اونطرف هم اینا رو بکشیم سمت خودمان.

Farhad: What I did, the reason that I said that I spoke English with [my children] outside the home, or at least, at certain times at home when we first came, was this, because I didn’t want to distance myself from their world. I wanted, similar to Persian, well, which is ok, there is also English. I wanted to know what they were saying, what they were talking about.

Farah: We make ourselves closer to them, while, at the same time, trying to attract them towards us.

Nevertheless, I could feel a sense of hesitation – if not to say guilt – about using English with his children in Farhad’s talk. This sense of hesitation can also be inferred when he tries to rationalise his use of English at home, and to redress its ‘unacceptability’ by stressing ‘at certain times when we first came’. This uncertainty about parental language choice, is often increased when parents receive contradictory advice, particularly from those who are deemed to be ‘experts’, such as educators, pediatricians, or speech pathologists. The excerpts below illustrate instances of this kind of advice given to parents.

رامین: اول که اومدیم همه به ما می‌گفتند در خانه انگلیسی صحبت کنید. من واقعیتش یک مدت دچار تردید شده بودم که واقعا باید این کار را بکنیم یا نه. بعد به این نتیجه رسیدم، “نه”.

Ramin: When we first came, everybody told us to speak English at home. Honestly, I began to feel dubious about it for a while, whether to do it, really, or not. Then I came to the conclusion that, ‘no’.

 

آذر: اوایل که آمدیم معلم امیر خیلی تأکید می‌کرد امیر در منزل انگلیسی صحبت کنیم، بعد من به او گفتم شاید خیلی نتوانیم با او انگلیسی حرف بزنیم ولی سعی می‌کنیم امیر را لغت یاد بدهیم.

Azar: When we first came, Amir’s teacher emphasised so much that we should talk in English with him at home. Later I told her that maybe we would not be able to speak that much English with him, but we would try to teach Amir more [English] words.

 

ایمان: ما حتی یک سری مشاوره گرفتیم، نزدیک مدرسه، که رفتیم principal مدرسه را دیدیم. ما حتی ازش پرسیدیم که ما چکار کنیم. گفت “اصلاً شما به انگلیسی این کاری نداشته باشید. شما تا میتونید فارسی را باهاش کار کنید.” گفت “شما انگلیسی‌اش را به ما بسپرید، شما باهاش فارسی.”

Iman: We even sought some advice, close to school, when we went and saw the school principal. We even asked her what to do. She said, ‘Don’t worry about her English. You work on Persian with her as much as you can.’ She said, ‘Leave her English to us, you use Persian with her.’

In multilingual contexts, such either-or propositions undergirded by monolingual ideologies oversimplify the reality of multilingual existence in the emotion-laden context of family interactions where members have more than one linguistic resource at their disposal. A reality which is depicted by Emad, a father for whom family multilingualism is not a new experience that came with migration. Emad had himself grown up with multiple languages back in Iran.

عماد: می‌دانید یک نکته است که در فارسی و انگلیسی- خواهرم که با او هم انگلیسی صحبت می‌کردیم و هم فارسی، بعضی وقت‌ها می‌خواستیم احساساتمان را خیلی دقیق بگوییم. بعضی وقت‌ها مجبور می‌شدیم، با هم صحبت می‌کردیم، من یادمه با خواهر برادرم فارسی صحبت میکردیم. می‌گفتیم این چیزی که می‌خواهم بگویم، آن حرف دل من است، این کلمه است که در ترکی هست که در فارسی نیست، یا در انگلیسی هست که در این دوتا زبان نیست. می‌خواهیم بگوییم بعضی وقت‌ها آن کلمات کمک می‌کند که آدم اون اصل حسش رو خود را درست بیان کند.

Emad: You know, there is a point that in Persian and English- with my sister who we spoke in English and Persian, sometimes we wanted to express our feelings very precisely. Sometimes we had to, when we spoke together, I remember that we spoke Persian with my sister and brother. We said that what I want to say, that is the word of my heart, it is this word which exists in Turkish, but not in Persian, or that, it exists in English but not in those two languages. What I mean to say is that sometimes those words help you express precisely the spirit of your emotions.

Emad is one of the parent participants who embrace the fact that a multiplicity of languages can be developed as resources to convey emotions. Therefore, while recognising the different context of his child’s English learning to that of his own, Emad allows a natural flow of emotional communication by his child.

عماد: مثلا، اونروز به مادرش میگفتش که، مامانش رو صدا کرد شب میگفت،‘!Just give me a hug’ مثلا این احساسش را داشت بیان می‌کرد. ولی، خب، احساس میکنم، ما فکر می‌کردیم که این احساس، در واقع، با یک زبان native دارد ساخته می‌شود نه با یک زبان مصنوعی که ما یاد گرفتیم.

Emad: For instance, [our daughter] was saying to her mother the other day, she called her mum at night and said, ‘Just give me a hug!’ She was, for instance, expressing her emotions. But, well, I feel, we thought that, in fact, this emotion is being made through a native language, not through an artificial one that we learnt.

All in all, the emotional primacy of the first language is a reality in migrant families. However, at the same time, the development of ‘emotional multilingualism’ is another reality that needs to be acknowledged. In migration contexts parents may be particularly concerned about maintaining emotional ties with their children. As migrant families become socialized into a new society, the relationship between language and emotions is bound to change.  The dilemma of which language to choose may well be the product of a monolingual mindset that unnecessarily denies the reality of families’ linguistic and emotional growth.

Pavlenko, A. (2004). ‘Stop Doing That, Ia Komu Skazala!’: Language Choice and Emotions in Parent—Child Communication Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 25 (2-3), 179-203 DOI: 10.1080/01434630408666528

Auburn parking ticket (left: quadrilingual on back; right: city logo on front)

In Australia with its persistent monolingual mindset coming across any kind of official institutional multilingual communication always feels like a minor triumph. And that’s how I felt when I recently went to park my car at a Sydney parking garage and the machine at the gate spit out this multilingual parking ticket. In German, English, Italian and French, the ticket says:

Please do not leave the ticket in the car. Please take care not to fold or bring ticket in contact with direct heat. Please note that the parking conditions in operation are displayed within the car park.

European readers will be familiar with this kind of parking ticket. It is produced by Designa, a parking management company headquartered in Germany and I think I received identical parking tickets during visits to Europe. I cannot be sure because I never pay much attention to the text on parking tickets. Receiving a multilingual parking ticket in Australia, however, immediately caught my attention because I had never ever encountered a parking ticket with anything other than text in English only.

Is this quadrilingual parking ticket a sign that the ideology of official English monolingualism that blithely ignores Australian multilingual realities is starting to crack? I don’t think so.

Let me tell you about the context of the parking garage where I received the ticket.

The parking garage is located in the Sydney suburb of Auburn and is operated by the Auburn City Council. Throughout Sydney, Auburn is known as an immigrant suburb with a highly diverse, predominantly Muslim, population of Middle Eastern origin. Consequently, Auburn’s city motto is “Many Cultures, One Community.”

The iconic status of Auburn as a migrant and Muslim suburb is best evidenced by the fact that the acclaimed TV police series East West 101 is set there. The series plays on the global conflict between East and West as well as the local opposition between Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs and its poorer western suburbs with their migrant populations.

Consequently, linguistically, Auburn is a fascinating place, too. According to Australian Census data from 2011, only 13.5% of Auburn households are monolingual in English (for all of Sydney that figure is 72.5% and for all of Australia it is 76.8%). Conversely, at 84.8% the number of bi- and multilingual households in Auburn is exceptionally high in comparison to the rest of Sydney (24.5%) and Australia (20.4%).

In fact, more people in Auburn speak Arabic at home than English. The table shows the top languages other than English.

Table 1: Auburn’s Main Languages (Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2011 Census)

The fact that many of Auburn’s residents come from the Middle East is easily legible in the streetscape: Auburn is home to Australia’s largest mosque; many women wear some form of hijab; restaurants feature predominantly Afghan, Lebanese, Persian or Turkish cuisine; and commercial signage in Arabic, Persian and Turkish abounds.

So, how does the German-English-Italian-French parking ticket fit into the linguistic landscape of Auburn?

Well, it does not. According to the 2011 census, 19 Auburn residents claimed to speak French at home; 15 German; and 245 Italian. So, the choice of languages on the parking tickets is obviously not locally motivated; if it were, I would have marvelled at an Arabic-English-Turkish-Chinese quadrilingual parking ticket.

The language on a parking ticket may seem banal, mundane, not worthy of further attention. However, language choice on such mundane texts is important because it is not only an expression of what is “normal” – conforms to the norm – but also shapes our expectations of normalcy. The usual monolingual English parking tickets contribute to normalizing Australia as a monolingual English space. A German-English-Italian-French parking ticket sets up the dominant languages of Europe as the norm. In each case, there is a mismatch between the norm and actual multilingual realities. In each case, the effect is to devalue the actual languages of Australia and make them seem “foreign” and “strange.”

Excerpt from “The Haunted Lotus” by Australian-Hazara artist Khadim Ali (Source: Milani Gallery)

An objection that is commonly raised against Esperanto and other auxiliary languages is that they are “invented.” Somehow, being “invented” is assumed to give Esperanto a shady character: it’s just not natural. The problem with this view is that – in being invented – Esperanto is not unique. And I don’t just mean that there is also Klingon and Volapük. In fact, each and every language with a name is an invention. We may not always be able to identify the inventors – in fact the trick of the inventors of English, Chinese, German, Spanish and all the others – has been not to let themselves be identified as language inventors. Instead, they pose as teachers, priests, bureaucrats, academics, poets or scientists. The invention of major national languages such as these gets obscured by time (although Standard German with its origins in the 19^th century is not much older than Esperanto), and it is a rare opportunity to see a language invented before our own eyes.

Such an opportunity currently unfolds in Australia with the invention of the Hazaragi language. Late last year I was invited to attend the 2013 NSW Fair Trading Think Smart Multicultural Conference. Among the many important things I learnt at that conference was the discovery of a multilingual resource for renters in New South Wales. The video “Renting a home: a tenant’s guide to rights and responsibilities” is an excellent educational resource and it is available not only in English but, additionally, in 17 other community languages. What struck me was that three of these 17 languages were the same, as far as I am concerned: there is “Dari,” “Farsi” and “Hazaragi.” Isn’t it all Persian, I thought? I was aware that “Farsi” is often used for “Iranian Persian” and “Dari” for “Afghan Persian” but I had never encountered “Hazaragi” listed as a separate language before; it is usually treated as the Persian dialect spoken by the Hazara of Afghanistan. The Hazara are Shia Muslims of Mongol ancestry whose traditional homeland are the high mountains of central Afghanistan (Farr 2007).

So, I did some research and discovered that Hazaragi is a language that is currently being invented in Australia and linguists from around the world might wish to pay close attention how this process unfolds.

To begin with, it’s imperative to identify speaker numbers because you can’t have a “natural” language without a community of speakers – and remember I’m talking about concealed invention; not something as straightforward as Ludwik Zamenhof saying “an international auxiliary language is a great idea and I’m going to create one.” In order to achieve speaker numbers, the categories of the Australian national census had to be adapted a bit over the years, as a comparison of the category for “Persian” over five consecutive censuses shows: the 1991 Census had no category for Persian nor related varieties and they were all subsumed under “Asian Languages, not elsewhere included.” Reflecting growing immigration from Iran, by the next census in 1996, “Persian” had its own category, which remained unchanged in 2001. The 2006 Census saw a significant change to the category when the language label was changed to “Iranic languages” with three distinct subcategories: “Persian (excluding Dari),” “Dari” and “Other.” “Other” was defined to comprise “Iranic, not further defined,” “Kurdish,” “Pashto,” “Balochi” and “Iranic, not elsewhere classified.” (There is no need to write in and ask what the difference between “Iranic, not further defined” and “Iranic, not elsewhere classified” might be. I don’t know.) It was not until the 2011 Census that “Hazaragi” made its debut, when it was included in the “Iranic Languages, Other” category for the first time. The table visualizes the changes in category.

Another important aspect of instituting Hazaragi as a language in Australia is through the credentialing of interpreters. NAATI, the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters, credentials Hazaragi paraprofessional interpreters through testing. On inquiry, I have learnt that NAATI decisions about recognizing a variety as a language are based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data (see above) and “voices from the community about the designations that they use for themselves.” In fact, it seems quite impossible to find out how the decision to accord language status to Hazaragi was made. Even so, NAATI has clear guidelines as to what is correct and incorrect Hazaragi in a testing situation:

NAATI acknowledges that there are regional variations/dialects of the Hazaragi language. However, due to strong cultural and identity connections there is a high level of mutual understandability between these regional dialects.

For the purposes of NAATI testing, a candidate will not be penalised for the dialect spoken as long as what is being said would be understood by an average Hazara person living in Hazaristan.

Candidates need to be aware that the Hazaragi language spoken by Hazaras in some locations, including the major cities in Afghanistan, has been heavily influenced by other languages of those cities and areas. Any use of ‘none’ [sic] Hazargai’ [sic] words when interpreting would be penalised. (NAATI Information Booklet)

This statement is a crucial step in the invention of the Hazaragi language. After the language has been given a name, it is being codified. Again, the process of invention is dissimulated: the language spoken in the mythical place of origin, Hazaristan (incidentally, there is also a little identity war going on over whether that region should be called “Hazarajat” or “Hazaristan,” the latter supposedly being “more modern”) is normalised whereas language use that shows traces of the influence by other locations, particularly cities, is penalized, presumably because someone got it into their head that such influence is “incorrect.”

This particular invention – Hazaragi as the language of rural Hazaristan – is rather baffling: from an Australian perspective, the language spoken by “an average Hazara person living in Hazaristan” is entirely irrelevant because even if such persons were to exist in Afghanistan, they do not in Australia. The past three decades or more have been an unmitigated disaster for Afghanistan and have produced the world’s largest refugee population. Contemporary Hazara society is characterised by constant migration:

Like most Afghan groups, the Hazāras fled in large numbers after the coup of April 1978 and the Soviet intervention in 1979. Most of them went to one of the neighboring countries of Afghanistan. Migrants and refugees have thus come to overlap and can hardly be distinguished from each other. Their movements follow various patterns: thousands of farmers from the Hazārajāt migrate every winter to work in coal mines near Quetta for a few months, while young men migrate for longer periods to Iran to take on menial jobs. During the last two decades, the Hazāras have formed very efficient migratory and economic networks, based on the dispersion of relatives in Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. (Encyclopaedia Iranica)

Hazaragi has always been a contact variety – its main claim to distinction from Persian is the relatively higher number of Mongol loan words – and, in all likelihood, will continue to be a contact variety for a long time to come. It’s hard to see how inventing boundaries and a standard for this variety will do any good to anyone. Peter Mühlhäusler (2000) has an apt term for this kind of linguistics: segregational linguistics.

Farr, Grant. (2007). The Hazaras of Central Afghanistan. In B. Brower & B. R. Johnston (Eds.), Disappearing Peoples?: Indigenous Groups and Ethnic Minorities in South and Central Asia (pp. 153-168). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Mühlhäusler, Peter (2000). Language Planning and Language Ecology Current issues in language planning, 1 (3), 306-362 DOI: 10.1080/14664200008668011