“Remember to swim between the flags.”
“I wanted to flag this with you!”
“Can you hold this? I need to flag the bus.”
Whether we notice it or not we live inundated with both literal and metaphorical flags: Red Flags, Green Flags, white flags, beige flags, and most obviously, state flags. Iconography to symbolise a nation and its culture, history, and sovereignty. They serve as visual shorthand for a country’s identity. But what happens when flags, traditionally tied to national identity, are used to represent language? Let alone languages from countries that have colonial histories.
The Union Jack was first raised in so-called Australia on 29th April 1770 by Captain Cook at Botany Bay, and thus English became the supposed language of the land. Today, the English language is represented by either the United Kingdom’s Union Jack (UK English), or the United States’ Star Spangled Banner (American English). A question comes to the forefront: should the international symbol for a language be the flag of the country of origin, or the country where there is the biggest speaking population?
The answer to this question is deeper than the flag you select on Duolingo or the language card you chose at an international museum. Language is more than a means of communication — it is a reservoir of soft power for political and economic force. Colonial languages English, French, and Spanish are the lingua franca for the United Nations (in addition to Arabic, Chinese and Russian) sustaining its political, economic and social power structures.
Just as politics and economics transcend borders, so too does language, evolving beyond its place of origin. Language is a living, evolving entity, growing outside of the country it was born in. Sixty percent of daily French speakers live in Africa, a legacy of French colonialism. The Academie Française, the principal authority of the French language, mired in its colonial supremacy, refuses to acknowledge the significant contribution African Francophones and African immigrants make to spoken French. Notably through slang called ‘verlan’, which has become infused into the daily French expression.
Verlan (the inverse of the French word l’envers which means ‘reverse’) involves taking the last part of the syllable of a word and placing it at the beginning of the word. Similar to pig latin in English, Verlan has become popularised in spoken French in major metropolitan cities, such as Paris. The colonial language has been adulterated, subverted by its former subjects, creating a powerful counter-cultural force of linguistic plurality. Yet the ‘Drapeau Tricolore’ remains the symbol for the French language. Should it be inverted to recognise Verlan as influenced by both North African dialects and Arabic, which feels like an entirely different language?
The question of how to represent a language is greater than just an aesthetic one: it is how we become conscious of historical realities and contemporary linguistic plurality. Should there be a consideration of linguistic plurality when representing a language, a nation, or a peoples? Would it be possible to reimagine the symbol for the English language to incorporate the countries with the largest proportion of English speakers; United States, India and Nigeria? Should it be a hybrid flag of sorts?
Flags are embattled emblems, tied to histories of dominance, conquest, and nationhood. If language is fluid and shaped by those who speak it, perhaps it is time to rethink how we visually represent it. Instead of relying on static and politically loaded national flags, we could adopt new symbols that better capture the shared and evolving nature of language. Whether through hybrid flags or entirely new icons, the way we represent languages should reflect their true global plurality, and not just their colonial past.
