A Colonized Tongue Imprisons the Mind: The English Language as a System of Disconnection and Enchanting it for Liberation

The English language is the world’s most widely spoken language with about 400 million native speakers, and over 1 billion that have learned English as a second language. To truly understand the power words have to shape entire worlds, it is imperative to identify their origin and root, the societal subconscious imprint, and how you can transform your relationship to certain words to bend towards liberation.

The English Language is Fragmented by Design
Evolving as a hybrid language, with Germanic bones, Latin ornamentation, and a romance language overlay, it became a disjointed patchwork of borrowed pieces rather than a sacred synthesis. Fragmented and severed from its roots, English became a language of disconnection – where most people speak without knowing the origin, tone, or full impact of their words.

The emphasis on abstract nouns and ownership language takes concepts that would generally hold lived and relational meaning and reduces them into a rigid and disembodied understanding defined by the individual’s elusive understanding of societal expectations. Words like “success”, “progress”, “value”, and “resource” are words that would normally be defined in relation to connection, but have instead become projections of a system of competition.

Suppression of Tone, Gesture & Breath
English is primarily a low-context language using words and written symbols explicitly, without tone, movement, silence, or intuitive gesture. When these forms of expression are used in tandem with the English language, they are often judged or perceived as impolite, uneducated, and obnoxious. The judgement associated with the English language being culturally integrated with tone and gesture can be seen in the societal perception of Black, Italian, Hispanic and Indigenous communities that often incorporate expression into the English language and are perceived as unpredictable, violent, or intense. This creates a standard of minimizing expression that flattens reality, suppressing the energetic intelligence of silence, timing, rhythm, and nuance.

English became the primary colonial and bureaucratic language, used to encode hierarchies, legal manipulation, deflection of accountability and rituals of inverted civility. Rather than increase clarity, responsibility and truth as communication intends, it is used to manipulate, deceive and create confusion by weaponizing politeness, performance and passive voice throughout society.

Spell: Naming Power
In ancient languages to name someone or something was to activate the spirit within. In English, spelling becomes rote memorization, detaching meaning from poetic magic into utilitarian function. This lead to the collapse of intentionality in the way we write, speak and communicate in favor of efficient processing further detaching us from each other and the world around us.

English Enchantment
Every time you authentically express yourself through tone, word choice, laughter, absurdity, slowness, play, myth or slang you are distorting the container of control the English language placed us within. When you tone police yourself, you are creating a hostile environment for others who may not have the ability to code switch so easily because of education access or geographical background.

To reclaim language is to remember your own tone, cadence, and word choice and allow yourself to flow in your true expression rather than observing what is being expressed from the perception of how an audience might receive it, and adjusting the delivery.