English is not a trap

Michael Hofmann is one of the most interesting figures in the U.K. literary scene. As a consequence, I'm always on the look-out for features about him. They tend to provoke numerous thoughts on my part, so it was no surprise when I was deeply struck by his interview in The Guardian this week in which he states the following:

"English is basically a trap: class trap, dialect trap, feeling trap. It’s almost a language for spies, for people to find out what people are really thinking." 

As someone who speaks three languages and has lived in a non-English-speaking country for over twenty years, I couldn't disagree more. English itself isn't the trap. Instead, it's Hofmann's upbringing in a certain social environment that traps him. The interviewer mentions his RP tones, while also describing his boarding school and Oxbridge education.

In other words, Hofmann feels hemmed in by the English he associates with the society that he knows. Of course, this linguistic world view is hugely limited, as if the English language were restricted to how it is used at Winchester College and Cambridge University. In the interview, Hofmann also states the following when comparing German with English:

“I have come to be very fond of German again. There are reaches of simplicity that English cannot do without sounding ignorant and stupid. In English you always have to sound as if you are making an effort."

When attempting to generalise, he's actually comparing his specific experience of the two languages. For example, the English that is spoken in the playgrounds and pubs of my home town bears no resemblance to the language he describes. Nor does the English that's used in numerous other parts of the British Isles. And this is before invoking the English of other countries.

Language doesn't trap us. The burden of its social connotations form the real trap, and this is true of English, German, Spanish, French, etc, etc. Of course, the personal knowledge of an extra language is another trap: bilingualism enriches you in terms of the layers and texturing that you can encounter in both languages, yet it also means you are never quite at home in either. This is no fault of the languages themselves. It's down to the societies where we've experienced them.