My Language is My Homeland

“My language is my homeland” joyfully exclaims the famous Portugu-
ese poet fernando Pessoa while the american writer of romanian ori-
gin, andrew Codrescu complains by saying “I used to be a romanian,
then I translated myself into the English language!” The motif of lan-
guage as homeland is present in most if not all the world literatures.
language is the last safe house for a writer and a man, the shelter yet to
be conquered by an army, the sanctuary that no outlaw dares to step in
or bandit to dishonour, the intangible yet invaluable commodity that
no banker has managed to put a price tag on. one’s mother tongue is
inseparable from one’s identity and being. The mother tongue is the ul-
timate treasure that is passed down to the next generation for safekeep-
ing. Just remember all those centuries of ottoman rule over Balkans
when the folk, spoken poetry carried the Serbian name, memories, wis-
dom, proverbs and chants. The language is also an active component
of the identity building process.
It’s not only a language that is passed to us for safe-keeping but it
comes also with the responsibility to develop it further, to nurture it,
enriching it and pass it onto the next generation.
In our case the question of language and identity has several diffe-
rent, perhaps unique dimensions. for example, the question of the for-
mation of the languages that didn’t exist in former Yugoslavia: Bos-
nian and Montenegrin. The question here is: what were the criteria for
these to become “languages”? alas, as it is widely recognised, this was
not a subtle linguistic point but more of a blunt political and short-
term interest of the local elite and as such consigned to the research
agenda of the history of languages (and politics too). Therefore, for the
purpose of our dialogue on these pages, I suggest a comparative ap-
proach to the subject of the nation, ethnicity and their language and
will just glance at the English and their language.
The last time a conqueror set foot on the English “green and pleas-
ant” countryside was in 1066 when the normans led by William (hen-
ceforth so adeptly nicknamed) the Conqueror, defeated the  anglo-
Saxons at the battle of Hastings, in the south east of England.
The winners of this bloody battle that saw King Harold, the last
anglo-Saxon king being transfixed by an arrow, imposed their rule,
their laws and brought with them their own language, french.
furthermore, many a folk story was told about richard the lion
Heart, one of the great English heroes. This, although he did not
speak English and was publicly expressing his dislike of England com-
plaining that he would gladly sell it if he only could find a buyer! Then
there was King John called the lackland who was so unpopular and
mean to everyone that to date no royal family would name a child after
his name, although John is a name most common in England.
Interestingly enough, that King John was forced by some of his
barons to sign and verify the Magna CarTa lIBErTaTuM (1215),
the first charter, bill of rights that defined the roles, duties and rights of
the King and his subjects. one interesting feature of this document is
certainly the list of names of the barons entrusted to oversee its imple-
mentation. Most of those were norman names. names of the norman
conquerors, the powerful french speaking aristocracy.
Hence, in the days of John lackland, English (anglo-Saxon) was
the language of the farmers while french was the language of the priv-
ileged aristocracy, If we only glance at the English language vocabulary
we will see that the anglo-Saxon words denote animals in the fields
and the french denote meat of the animals on the table: i.e. ox Vs beef.
Joseph Williams, an american linguist, undertook to investigate
the etymology of the vocabulary in the English language. He worked
on a sample of 10,000 words taken from business correspondence. He
came up with the following:

Words of french origin made up 41%;
“original” English words made up 33%;
of latin origin 15%;
old norse words 2%;
Dutch words 1%;
all other languages 10%.

How did such historical and linguistic circumstances influence the
English language? Well, based on evidence we must conclude that such
an influence was undoubtedly positive for: English is said to be the
language with the richest lexicon of all; it became the Lingua Franca of
the international affairs and it is the language that all other languages
feel a need “to resist”.
one interesting feature of such an English language is that its inter-
national dimension is characterised and defined by the non-native
speakers (us) language production for the vast majority of the speakers
are not native! Hence, the prototypical liverpudlians/Scouses, Man-
cunians, Jordies and Cockneys are not speakers of the English that
features so prominently as Lingua Franca.
and how is this interesting “situation” reflected on the identity of
the “subjects”? Well, today beyond the twilight of the “Empire where
the sun never sets”, the situation is still quite intriguing. The peoples
living here on the British Isles are the English, the Scots, the Welsh
and the Irish.
So, one feels like asking, where do these Brits come from then?
Well, the ones to call themselves the Brits are typically the English
while the Scots tend to be Scottish, the Irish tend to be Irish and the
Welsh… Welsh!
Some less young readers will recognise here the well known pat-
tern and recall the days of former Yugoslavia when only the Serbians