English as an Artificial Language

Language is my primary medium, and tool. My partner teaches it. Of course I'm thinking about the craft of writing, and what AI is doing to it. But when I come across blanket rejections of the machine, something in me twitches a little. What's unsaid?

My close friend shared a piece with me today, that seems to be doing the rounds. Title? 'I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me.' By Marcus Olang'. As I'm about to leave Australia for multilingual Belgium and Switzerland, then visit Kenya for the first time, this piece landed with me.

It makes the following argument, that algorithmic English closely resembles the language that people from former colonies, and non-native learners around the world, integrated in their schooling. The three part sentences, the predictable structures of arguments, the smooth rhythm – even the now-notorious em-dashes: those are the marks of imperial English.

Awks! That hipster language is * also * the language of global domination. I'm complicit: I spent huge amounts of time integrating it: for love, for access, for fun.

True, beside a touch of accent, tell-tale signs of my native tongue will occasionally pop up - I still exclaim, on occasion, 'it's so cute, the dog', with an oh-so-French topicalisation, or drop in a Latinate word without quite realising it. But the deep structures of my English are, mostly, based on habits I formed at school, with a sprinkle of early 90s video game English.

The same might well be true for most speakers today – the vast numbers of the non-natives: English is an artificial language, shaped by an imperial algorithm. We became cyborgs a long time ago.