European languages go global

As we have seen, languages have always come into contact and influenced each other. As a result, languages and language families have spread throughout the world, shaping communities and often playing a significant role in nation building.

Among the many forces driving this spread, few have been as powerful as European colonialism. It started with the Spanish and Portuguese conquests of the Americas in the 15th century and was later expanded through British and French global imperialism. Although the 20th century saw a wave of decolonisation which limited the linguistic dominance of colonial powers, their languages remain firmly embedded in many of the nations they once controlled. English, French, Spanish and Portuguese are among the top 10 most spoken languages in the world, representing approximately one third of the world’s population (Ethnologue, 2025).

The spread of European languages was multifaceted and each power took its own approach based on its objectives. Here, we explore just a few of the ways the different colonial powers imposed their languages and sidelined others.

Linguistic hierarchy

Colonialism introduced a racist hierarchy in which the colonisers presented themselves as superior to the colonised population. As such, the colonial language was deemed the most prestigious, dominating administrative and commercial structures (Léglise & Migge, 2007). For example, the French believed that “African dialects [were] not languages of civilisation.” (Davesne, 1933, p. 6). The use of the term ‘dialect’ clearly positioned African languages as inferior to French and the Mission Civilisatrice (‘Civilising Mission’) ideology was used to justify eradicating them. Speaking the colonial language became the only way to advance socially, leading many to “[raise] their children in the colonial language rather than in an African language” (Léglise & Migge, 2007, p. 6).

Léglise and Migge (2007) note that this differed somewhat from the British and Belgian policies. In the British empire, teaching the colonial language was not considered “conducive to the aims of colonial rule” (p. 13) as only a small number of people were required to use English. In India, it was argued that an increase in English proficiency would lead to an increase in applications for jobs that the government could not provide. Keen to keep people loyal, the British did not impose English to the same extent as the French. In the Belgian empire, French was at the top of the linguistic hierarchy, but a small number of local ‘vehicular’ languages were considered useful tools for spreading Christianity (Fabian, 1983).

Language death: collateral damage?

In some cases, colonial practices led to the extinction of indigenous languages. Most of the time, this was driven by the shift from local to colonial languages that we have already seen. However, in some cases, indigenous peoples and their languages were eradicated more deliberately. This is perhaps most evident in the colonisation of Brazil in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Although the Portuguese relied on Brazil’s indigenous populations for labour, the colonial period was marked by considerable tension and violence. The Portuguese Crown, under the guise of protecting and expanding the catholic faith, declared so-called “just war[s]” as a means of taking prisoners for legal enslavement (Alves-Melo, 2020). This had a detrimental effect on indigenous populations. For example, the Botocudos of Eastern Brazil saw a drastic decrease in numbers, in large part due to the deliberate introduction of smallpox and poisoned food by the Portuguese nobility (Keane, 1884). As a result, the Botocudo language (known today as Krenak) is endangered today.

Although Portuguese became the official and most widely spoken language in Brazil, efforts to protect indigenous languages have been made. The 1988 Federal Constitution guaranteed indigenous people rights to ethnic recognition and to their territories. The indigenous population is estimated to be nearly 900,000 people, covering 12.5% of Brazilian territory (Alves-Melo, 2020). Ultimately, however, colonisation has left an indelible mark on Brazilian linguistic diversity. Although Brazil boasts 274 languages and remains the most linguistically diverse country in Latin America, this pales in comparison to the pre-conquest estimate of 1,200 indigenous languages.

What roadmap for a global language?

The examples we have explored demonstrate that there is no single roadmap for the globalisation of languages. Their spread takes a long time and different policies lead to varied results. Early missionary efforts by the Belgians and the Spanish used indigenous languages to evangelise, while the French pursued a hardline approach, enforcing the colonial language in all spheres of life. The British and Belgian empires saw their languages as primarily for the elites and were content to allow the majority of the colonised population to speak what they regarded as lesser languages. Regardless of the policy, however, the colonial language consistently occupied the highest status, reinforcing the racist hierarchy.

Even after decolonisation, this legacy endures through neocolonialism. The Democratic Republic of Congo only became truly French-speaking after decolonisation (André, 2019) as French was regarded as the language of opportunity. The same is true for Portuguese in Brazil, where indigenous populations can only voice their opposition to further exploitation of natural resources if they speak the official language.

References

Ahumada, I. (2021). Church and Monarchy before the Hispanic-American indigenous languages (1503-1803). Káñina, 45(1), 141-158.

Alves-Melo, P. (2020). Indigenous Peoples and the Portuguese Crown in the 17th and 18th Centuries. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History.

André, J. (2019). L’avenir du français est en RDC. La Croix. https://www.la-croix.com/Monde/Afrique/Lavenir-francais-RDC-2019-08-02-1201038948

Davesne, A. (1933). La langue française, langue de civilisation en Afrique occidentale française. Saint-Louis du Sénégal, Imprimerie du gouvernement du Sénégal.

Ethnologue. (2025). The Ethnologue 200. SIL International. https://www.ethnologue.com/insights/ethnologue200/

Fabian, J. (1983). Missions and the colonization of African languages: Developments in the former Belgian Congo. Canadian Journal of African Studies/La Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, 17(2), 165-187.

Keane, A. H. (1884). On the Botocudos. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 13, 199-213.

Léglise, I., & Migge, B. (2007). Language and colonialism. Applied linguistics in the context of creole communities. Language and communication: Diversity and change. Handbook of applied linguistics, 297-338.

Tilmatine, M. (2016). French and Spanish colonial policy in North Africa: revisiting the Kabyle and Berber myth. International journal of the sociology of language, 2016(239), 95-119.

Wasserman-Soler, D. I. (2020). Truth in many tongues: religious conversion and the languages of the early Spanish Empire. Penn State Press.