European Review, Vol. 17, No. 1, 203–212 r 2009 Academia Europæa doi:10.1017/S1062798709000660 Printed in the United Kingdom English and the Language of Others ROBERT J.C. YOUNG Faculty of Arts & Science, English Department, New York University, 19 University Place, 514, New York, New York 10003, USA. E-mail: rjy2@nyu.edu Any consideration of English in the context of a literature for Europe prompts the question of whether English can be contained within the paradigm of Europe, whether it could or should ever be restrained from overflowing its edges and boundaries. While English was created from the crucible of European languages, its filiations have long since stretched far beyond the borders of the continent. Close observation of the dynamics of English, and of English Literature, it could be argued, illustrates one reason why contemporary Britain finds it difficult to limit itself to an exclusively European dimension. For a long time now, English has undergone cultural encounters with the language of others who dwell far beyond the limits of its own originating continental space. Moreover, as we know, English itself as a language has spread around the globe: for some time now, more literature has been written in English outside Britain than from within it, with the result that English literature has found itself marked by other cultures in the categories used to describe its own ‘others’: world literatures in English, Anglophone, postcolonial, Commonwealth literature, etc. All these ways of describing literatures in English written outside Britain have particular nuanced implications – some describe the language, others political formations – but in every case the general assumption is that they are written, or read, in English. In fact, being defined by the language rather than the country, they are probably more consistently written in English than English literature itself. ‘Indian English’ is now possibly the most widely spoken form of English on earth – or so David Crystal somewhat improbably claims on the basis of being greeted with ‘Hello, how are you?’ by schoolchildren wherever he went on a visit to India. 1 So perhaps those who complain about the globalization of English should start with India, except that they need to remember that there the language locks inexorably into a Hindi which is itself spattered with English and ‘chalta hai’! English has shifted. Hinglish has reached. Let’s prepone that talk!