43. Monolingualism is ideological

Increasingly I write out of a sense that language, any language, is multiple, poly. Americans don’t speak and write English. They speak and write a language comprised of multiple other languages, creoles, pidgins. We think of English as primarily composed of Germanic and Latin languages, but what about Arabic, which entered—via various power matrices, de- and re-coloniziations—numerous Romance languages (and Latin itself). Do we already always speak and write Arabic? There are hundreds of Arabic words that we use. Candy. Tangerine. Mattress. Zero. These poems take as their point of departure English words of clear Arabic origin. Algebra. Garble. Spinach. Ream. Monolingualism is ideological; it obscures the facts. Sugar. Popinjay. Tuna. Gerbil. / Christian Hawkey, New Museum