As it spreads across the world, who owns English?
Or, for that matter, French or Portuguese?
WHAT COUNTRY does French belong to? The answer seems obvious: France, as it says on the label. But there are roughly four times as many speakers of French outside France as there are within it. Who does Portuguese belong to? You might now hesitate to blurt out “Portugal”, remembering that Brazil’s population is about 20 times bigger than Portugal’s. Maybe Portuguese belongs jointly to them both. But then 70m people live in African countries in which Portuguese is an official language. Perhaps it belongs to them, too.
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This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “A language for the world”
Culture May 27th 2023
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