Is English stealing the home of Mongolian?

Update, Sept 16, 2020: A Mongolian translation of this blog post is now available here. Translated by Cholmon Khuanuud.

In April 2016, a Mongolian family missed their flight at Baita International Airport in Hohhot, the capital city of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR), an autonomous region within China. People missing their flights happens all the time, of course, in every corner of the world. However, this mishap made national headlines and became symbolic of the struggle faced by speakers of small languages such as Mongolian vis-à-vis a large national language such as Chinese and global English. It demonstrates how even Mongolian, one of the official languages of IMAR, can be sacrificed to the discourses and practices of global English.

Let me relate the incident: an elderly woman from Shiliingol League (also spelled “Xilingol” in English) in mid-eastern Inner Mongolia required medical attention that was not available in her hometown and had to fly to Hohhot for the procedure. Her son and grandson accompanied her to provide support. Mother and son are both monolingual in Mongolian, the official language of IMAR (along with Chinese). The grandson, who brought this story to the attention of Mongols across the country, is bilingual in Mongolian and Chinese. None of the three speaks any English, a language that is irrelevant to people in Shiliingol League, as it is to people in many places around the world.

On their way back home from Hohhot to Shiliingol this family arrived at the airport in good time but missed their flight when they could not make it to the gate on time. As the grandson relates the story, they missed the flight for two reasons.

First, announcements at the airport were only provided in Chinese and English but not in Mongolian. This made it impossible for them to obtain timely information. When the Chinese announcement was made, the young man happened to use the bathroom. On his return, his grandmother told him that the loudspeaker had just chattered something in Chinese. A few seconds later, the English announcement for the flight was made but, naturally, they did not think it would be relevant to their flight within IMAR and they could not understand it anyways.

Second, by the time they realized their flight was being called up, an excessive security check caused them further delay. The grandmother was asked to remove her scarf and two layers of winter coats and was checked from head to toe. As no one else was subject to such excessive scrutiny except the old woman wearing minority dress, it is reasonable to assume that the family was the victim of racial profiling.

Realizing they had missed the last flight for the day was distressing, particularly as they had no idea how to spend the night with the sick elderly lady. They approached the service desk to ask for help. There, they received the following response, which infuriated the young man:

This is not Mongolia; this is Inner Mongolia. In Inner Mongolia we have to speak Chinese, it is our official language. Of course, English is also our official language. [my translation]

He has shared his frustration on social media:

After hearing this, my heart was struck as if by ice. It is unbearable. My Chinese is not good enough to argue with the service agent, although I know very clearly that Chinese is the national and official language, and Mongolian is the official language of Inner Mongolia together with Chinese. English is definitely not an official language. [my translation]

Then he continues:

This is my home but why does it look like the home of someone else? Is Britain my country? Is Britain my home? Why do we have to use English? Why can’t we have a service in Mongolian? [my translation]

The young man’s account was shared widely by Mongols, as was his anger. Luckily, IMAR’s Mongolian language regulation and guidelines actually stipulate the use of Mongolian in the public service: government offices and institutions have to be staffed by reasonable numbers of Mongolian and Chinese bilinguals, even if the story shows the gap between the language policy and its implementation (see also Grey, 2017, for another Chinese case study).

In the end, the story had a happy conclusion. The airport apologized to the family and reimbursed them. Even more importantly, Mongolian language announcements are now being offered at Hohhot’s Baita International Airport.

“The discourses and practices of global English produce an orientation to the global at the expense of the local”, argues Ingrid Piller in her book Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice (2016, p. 202). The incidence clearly demonstrates that the spread of English not just further subordinates the oppressed but also deprives them of their language rights on their own land, where they are, at least, the titular nationality. The presence of English in this Inner Mongolian airport gives this peripheral region which vies for investment and economic development an international and advanced outlook. The motivation and desire behind the replacement of Mongolian with English resembles what Bulag observes with relation to the replacement of the Mongolian administrative term aimag (盟, “league”) since the 1980s:

Cities have emerged as the centres where industrial miracles and ‘actions’ occur, pointing towards a future utopia, departing from Mao’s ideological ambivalence, and are represented in the media as an embodiment of modernity replete with much of the palette of global capitalist renderings of “modernity” and its radically persuasive imagery of the good life, progress and development. Such a modernity is what I will call alter/native modernity, that is, not just an alternative Chinese modernity, but one which hinges on altering the native Mongol cultural and political institutions and properties (Bulag, 2002, p. 198).

The presence of English instead of Mongolian at Hohhot airport shares so much similarity with the replacement of the “backward” Mongolian administrative names with modern capital-desiring cities. Or as Piller states, “the promotion of English is tied to an external orientation to development”, which ultimately serves only the interests of global and local elites.

However, in the context of Inner Mongolia, the promotion of English at the expense of Mongolian in public space does more than serve the interests of the small elite; it simultaneously delivers a severe blow to all Mongols. The public presence of Mongolian signifies the “remaining token degree of autonomy” (Bulag, 2002, p. 224) of Mongols; and the destruction of these remaining token means the loss of home. Or, as the young man in his account moans, it begins to look like someone else’s home.

Related content

Access explorations of the linguistic landscape at other airports here.

References

Bulag, U. E. (2002). From Yeke-juu league to Ordos municipality: settler colonialism and alter/native urbanization in Inner Mongolia. Provincial China, 7(2), 196-234. doi:10.1080/1326761032000176122

Grey, A. (2017). How do language rights affect minority languages in China? An ethnographic investigation of the Zhuang minority language under conditions of rapid social change. (PhD), Macquarie University.

Piller, I. (2016). Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.