When a language does not feel like your own, speaking it is a mortifying and wildly uncomfortable experience. Having a group of people with similar linguistic skills alleviates this tension, because a communal pidgin language naturally forms from a shared basic knowledge.
But in circles where everyone else speaks a language perfectly except you, there is a sense of helplessness that emerges. It is an unspoken awareness that those with fluency in that language carry a certain power over those who don’t; that language is, thus, imbued with authority and respect, and all others are diminished in its wake.
English is the default language through which every USyd student is taught and is expected to communicate in. But it isn’t necessarily the language that’s spoken by the student community. This is a lingua franca, a language used to bridge barriers between people who don’t share a mother tongue. Thus, people may choose a language for the sake of convenience, or switch to whichever language has the highest mutual proficiency. In other countries these can be languages that are widely spoken within a region, such as Spanish, French, Arabic, or Mandarin.
However, if English is the most widespread lingua franca in the world, that gives native English speakers a subtextual power in every conversation. And at USyd, all non-language classes are taught in English, and, more often than not, speaking English is enforced, such as in exams and elections.
Bohao Zhang, SRC Vice-President and an international student, said that “In SRC elections, campaigners are forced to speak in English – failure to comply results in serious consequences. This is an example of English being literally imposed upon students. Even when both parties are more comfortable in speaking another language, they are not allowed to. This is fundamentally problematic. One might perhaps argue there are colonial characteristics here. It makes international students less willing to interact and speak up on campus.”
He added that “As an international student, there’s always a sense of estrangement when you’re living so far from home. As such, speaking a shared first language counters this isolation, bringing a sense of solidarity and community.”
While studying in Japan over the summer, I experienced for the first time a university environment where English was not the default language, and how that transformed the linguistic power dynamic. Coming from USyd, where as a domestic student every additional language learned is considered a ‘bonus’, it was jarring, to say the least, when English was reduced to irrelevance. I found that where I would be loquacious in English, I was nearly mute in Japanese, giving the impression that I had nothing to say rather than that I lacked the tools to say it.
Although having a monolinguistic society largely works in countries like Japan where the population is almost entirely native Japanese speakers, in Australia there are some complications. Firstly, English is the language of a colonising country that has left a centuries-old bloody trail across the world, the language officialised by a government that has yet to cede First Nations lands. Secondly, Australia is one of the most immigrant-rich nations in the world. Of our 27 million people, around 8.2 million were born overseas, nearly a third of the total population.
Furthermore, we are isolated in our use of language as a result of our geography. With no neighbouring countries speaking other languages, we don’t have any obvious language to study. USyd’s language department has around a dozen languages on offer, but there’s no immediate answer to what an Australian student ought to study. Unless that student had a linguistic background inherited from their family, there is nothing to unify language students, and everything to disincentivise Australians from eschewing the global language of business.
USyd’s population is unique in that it has the highest proportion of international students in the country. Of these, Chinese students make up the majority, which means that amongst international students Mandarin becomes a quasi-lingua franca. But it also means that the tension between native and non-native English speakers is higher, because there is an incredibly diverse student community who are restricted to a single language. Bohao commented that we should “acknowledge the significant role which language plays in defining our multiculturalism and enriching campus life. It becomes problematic when English is enforced on students. This harms our inclusiveness and stifles our diversity.”
Judy Zhang, a Kiwi student who studied at USyd in 2024, said that “In terms of social mobility and navigating schooling, having English as my native language in the USyd/UoA [University of Auckland] environment where it is the lingua franca certainly makes things so frictionless that I sometimes forget linguistic friction can be possible. I’ve seen a student sitting in class running a live interpreting tool on their laptop so they could better comprehend the lecture. It’s also no surprise or rarity for students with language barriers [to] breach academic integrity and use generative AI… in their assignments.”
“As an overseas-born Chinese, I’m often subconsciously scoping out where I fit on ‘the spectrum’ between “white-washed” and “fresh-off-the-boat” in transnational and diasporic contexts… I’ve noticed it’s easier for me to bond with other overseas-born Asians who share a native proficiency in English but a more watery mother tongue, compared to pākeha [non-Maori] and Chinese international students.”
Claudia Gatica Barra, a Chilean student who likewise studied at USyd in 2024, commented that “For me, speaking and writing in English felt more freeing than doing it in Spanish (my mother tongue) since there is less of an emotional connection, more space between myself and the words… I had Modern Family’s Gloria echoing in my head: “Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?” And while I felt a spark of joy every time I heard someone talking in Spanish, I do believe that Usyd having such a big international community gives some kind of relief, as you can see many others in a similar position as you, we’re all in this together.”
This is not to say that you need to hang your head in shame and bash against Duolingo every day before class until you shake off the odious label of ‘monolingual’. The point here is to share the experience of feeling lost in a language, and acknowledging the power of those who use it as a mother tongue. When we leave the borders of our home we also leave our cozy linguistic bubble, and all the privileges that our language affords. It is a monumental effort to sound remotely coherent in any non-native language, and a few simple sentences masks years of effort. But the words we speak are not to be taken for granted. In every interaction across lands and languages, there is a small sense of triumph.
