Doing Philosophy in English: A Survey for Native and Non-Native Speakers
“Academic English,” the dominant language of contemporary philosophy, is different from everyday English. What are the challenges faced by native and non-native speakers of everyday English as they work in this language?
An effort is now underway to quantify and compare “the epistemic challenges faced by native and non-native English speakers in philosophy”.
One of the tools being used is a brief survey. The researchers running it are asking philosophers whose native language is English as well as philosophers whose native language isn’t English to take it.
One of them, Uwe Peters (Utrecht), sent along the following message:
For many of us, doing philosophy in academia today often involves using English to communicate with others. Academic English differs from everyday English in style and complexity, requiring both native and non-native English speakers to develop proficiency. But do both groups need to put in the same efforts and face similar challenges when contributing to philosophy in English?
To date, no study has quantified and compared the epistemic challenges faced by native and non-native English speakers in philosophy. Conducting such research is crucial because it may help us identify the specific difficulties faced by both groups.
We are conducting an international survey that targets anyone who has studied or is currently studying or doing research in philosophy. The survey will gather information on, for example, the time required to read, write, or understand a philosophy article or presentation in English. Whether you are a native or non-native speaker, your participation would be invaluable in helping us better understand this important issue.
The survey takes less than 15 minutes to complete, doesn’t collect any identifying personal data, and has received ethics approval from Utrecht University (Netherlands). We are also happy to share the results with participants who are interested in using the data for their own research.
You can access the survey on a secure Utrecht University Qualtrics platform here:
https://survey.uu.nl/jfe/form/SV_7ajkbaMwHOZLSM6
If you have any questions or thoughts about the project, just email us ([email protected]).
Thank you very much for your time and contribution!
Great idea for a project!
There was an interesting discussion about English as a lingua franca at this year’s meeting of the American Association of Mexican Philosophers (AAMP) — always a bilingual event, with talks in English and socializing mostly in Spanish.
If anyone’s interested in this topic, I’d encourage them to consider attending the next AAMP in Spring 2025. A lot of wonderful philosophy is being done in Spanish. And I think it’s good for Anglophone philosophy to have more bilingual events!
That’s an interesting project. I just finished the survey as a non-native speaker in English.
Some quick thoughts in case the researchers are interested:
1. When I was asked about my English proficiency, I have not taken any of the tests listed but TOEFL. I took it almost 20 years ago.I do not think my score then reflects my proficiency now. But I was not given any other way to finish this question.
2. For question 5.2, since I have not written any research paper in my native language, I do not know how to answer it.
3. For question 8.4, the question is about how often I *avoided* attending events. If I have never avoided attending, I do not see any option.
Also, my comments for questions 5.2 and 8.4 are based on my memory since I have no way to go back and revisit those questions.
Thanks so much for your feedback. Apologies, if you had some difficulties with the questions. I just wanted to briefly respond.
Re. 1. We added the conversion table only to help people who know and like to use their test scores to pick the corresponding descriptor from the list (ranging from ‘Beginner’ to ‘Proficient’). It sounds like you no longer trust your score. That’s no problem. Why didn’t you just pick the descriptor that you think best captures your current level? That’s what we thought people would do.
Re. 2. I’ve also written (almost) no research paper in my native language (German) and, because of that, I know it would take me much longer to write papers in my own language (I would have to look up the relevant terms in an English-to-German dictionary). If you have never written any research paper in your native language, how likely is it that you may need less time to write it in your native language now than in English (assuming you did write one in English)? If you think you would need more time, then didn’t we provide you with multiple options to choose from?
Re. 3. I’m not sure what you mean. We do offer ‘never’ right at the start. Can you say a bit more on what you mean?
Thank you for the response!
For Re.3 (question 8.4), I could not remember exactly so I could be wrong. The survey recorded my IP address so I cannot go back and check. I remember that while the first answer is “never”, but what is mentioned in the brackets seems to suggest that the “never” means that I never attended this kind of event rather than that I never *avoided* attending this kind of event. If I misremembered, I apologize!
No worries at all. I’ve just checked again. We’ve got ‘Not applicable (never attend such an event)’ and ‘Never (but I do sometimes attend such events)’ – where the ‘never’ refers to event avoidance. But this might have been confusing. It’s no problem though if you skipped the question. I’ll still be able to analyze all your other responses, and I’m looking forward to it!
Hello Uwe, I also have never written in my native languages. Yet the question adds “(assuming all relevant literature was available in both languages)”. This made me skip answering the question, personally. It would surely take me much longer without all relevant literature being available in either of my native languages. But if all relevant literature were available in either of my native languages, then my current issue of needing to translate jargon and technical formulations wouldn’t exist because there would be a whole corpus to draw from. It makes the question sufficiently speculative that I wouldn’t dare put it down to a number. If you don’t add this assumption, the question would be much easier. 🙂
I’m a native English speaker who has put in the effort to develop proficiency in French and German. I think it bears noting that, based on my own cross-linguistic experience, as well as interactions with non-native anglophones, English seems to be on the easier side of the target-language spectrum. The language’s low rate of verbal inflection, lack of grammatical genders, and highly simplified case system are three attributes that make breaking into English comparatively straightforward for non-native speakers. Of course, the language is not without its difficulties (particularly in written form), but as far as the merits of an international lingua franca go, English is a pretty accessible choice.
Yes, if I was a native speaker I would also find English easier… I do not think that there is any objective metric to determine the difficulty of a language. Indeed, for a native Mandarin Chinese speaker English is as accessible as Chinese is for a Native English (and Mandarin has a pretty simple grammar).
I think you’re misrepresenting my claim. I didn’t say “English is easier, full stop.” But rather, English is *comparatively* simpler. Perhaps I should have been more specific: “grammatically simpler compared to other European languages” (the only linguistic family with which I have experience). I named a few areas in which this is true (cases, inflections, genders) – areas in which English “objectively”, to use your term, has fewer distinct forms than its near cousins. You do bring up a good point in noting that European languages are not the only ones that exist, of course. I omitted other families due to lack of familiarity, more than anything else. Nevertheless, I would wager that a native Mandarin speaker would likely have an easier time with English than with, say, Finnish, with its numerous cases. Just as a native anglophone will likely have an easier time with Mandarin than with, say, Thai. Do you see my point?
To reiterate: at no point did I make the silly claim that “English is objectively the easiest language, why doesn’t everyone just learn it?”
Even if at no point did you make the silly claim that “English is objectively the easiest language, why doesn’t everyone just learn it?”, you did make the somewhat less silly but still silly claim about what you would wager regarding how easy it would be for a native Mandarin speaker to learn another language despite also admitting a lack of familiarity with that language.
One purpose of the survey is to gather empirical evidence about non-native speakers from non-native speakers. It’s counterproductive (and perhaps a little bit offensive) to sit on your native armchair and speculate. Maybe your speculations are right. Maybe they’re not. But I think it’s better to refrain from doing so and simply ask the relevant people what their experiences are. Do you see my point?
I do see and understand your point. Perhaps my “wager” was a less-than-optimal way of communicating this, but I simply meant to use it to make a point about numbers of grammatical forms, and my assumption that fewer forms = an easier language to learn (all things being equal). Andrea used Mandarin as an example, so I used it as well for rhetorical reasons. I elaborate on this with a bit more clarity below.
In regard to your second paragraph, I’m not sure it’s fair to convict me of “sitting in my native armchair”, especially if the implication is that I’ve affected an air of superiority. Certainly, that wasn’t my intention. I merely meant to make an observation, and perhaps to open up an interesting conversation; I didn’t instinctively find that to be an objectionable goal, but perhaps I went astray in my execution – if so, I apologize.
Additionally, as I pointed out, I’m certainly not a monolingual begging everyone to speak in my native tongue. I speak several other languages (not as many as I would like!). Below, you can even find me engaging with an interlocutor in French a bit; I quite enjoy speaking my second and third languages.
In fact, I’m actually something of an amateur language nut, which is why I posted my original remarks about English grammar.
Again, apologies if I gave the impression of hijacking the conversation, but in an online forum like this it doesn’t seem to me that ‘space to speak’ is limited in the same way as in a physical forum, for what it’s worth.
[I made a similar post earlier but I think I ran into a connectivity error that prevented it from being uploaded, so I’m re-posting. I actually think this version is a bit clearer, as well.]
I believe you’re misrepresenting my claim. I never said “English is the easiest language, full stop”. Rather, my point was that English is *comparatively simple*. By this, I simply meant to point out that English does not have nearly as many distinct grammatical forms as many other languages, including most of its near cousins. I named a few areas where this is true (cases, inflections, gender). And such grammatical features of a language actually are things that we can track somewhat ‘objectively’, to use your term (“language X has this number of cases, which is fewer than language Y”, etc.). I suppose my basic assumption here is that the greater the number of distinct forms one must memorize (and then – harder still! – implement in everyday speech) in order to master a certain target language, the more difficult the target language will be to learn, provided we hold all other variables constant. I think I swallowed this notion down during my own experiences learning Latin, French, and German. I found Latin to be clearly the most difficult of these three languages simply due to the great multitude of forms one is obliged to learn in order to understand it. Do you disagree with this idea? It’s entirely possible I’m wrong here, of course, as I’m speaking anecdotally.
Naturally, as you allude to, the ease of learning a certain language will also depend on other factors, such as how distantly-related one’s native tongue is from the target-language. As you say, English is just as difficult for a Mandarin speaker to master as Mandarin is for an English speaker. Nonetheless, I might wager that a Mandarin speaker would find it easier to develop competency in English than in, say, Greek. And, by the same token, an English speaker would likely have an easier time learning Mandarin than she would learning, say, Thai.
Naturally, there are lots of variables at play, but do you see my point here? To reiterate, I never made the silly assertion that “English is the easiest language, so why doesn’t everyone just speak it.”
With the (obvious, I hope) caveat that different languages will be harder or easier for different people to learn because they are closer to further from their own language, it does seem possible to make some comparisons on difficulty in general. This page is in larger part about how hard it is for a native English speaker to learn various langauges, but there is also a lot on it about what makes different langauges harder or easier to learn that will cut across native tongues. (It does seem to mostly fit the claims made here): https://www.fsi-language-courses.org/blog/fsi-language-difficulty/
Cette idée de l’anglais comme un “intermédiaire” relativement facile à apprendre est peut-être vraie lorsque l’on débute et pour un niveau acceptable de conversation. Toutefois, au niveau académique, les non-anglophones natifs sont avantagés d’une manière plus subtiles.
Par exemple, on pourrait me reprocher, dans un papier, des tournures de phrases correctes mais lourdes ou peu communes en anglais. De même, la richesse du vocabulaire vient moins facilement à un non-anglophone.
Lire un papier écrit dans un anglais soutenu est aussi cognitivement plus coûteux que de lire le même papier en français. Je dois m’asseoir à mon bureau pour lire, je ne peux pas le faire dans le train.
Dans une conférence, un anglophone natif peut se permettre de parler à toute vitesse et n’aura pas besoin de s’entrainer à prononcer certains mots complexes. Un non-natif devra s’entrainer à prononcer certains mots et à ralentir la cadence pour articuler.
Tous ces éléments me semblent orthogonaux à l’idée que l’anglais est relativement facile à apprendre. Maintenant, cela ne veut pas dire qu’en tant que non-anglophone, je me sente particulièrement à pleindre, mais il y a effectivement un subtile désavantage à ne pas être un locuteur de la lingua franca.
C’est un très bon point que vous soulevez. Naturellement, je suis d’accord ; c’est une évidence que ceux qui parlent la lingua franca comme langue maternelle sont avantagés par rapport à ceux qui doivent l’apprendre. Toutefois, je remarquerais aussi que les difficultés connues par les non-natifs ne se limitent pas à l’apprentissage de l’anglais. En tant qu’anglophone je suis également obligé de les affronter quand je dois lire un texte en français ou livrer un discours lors d’une conférence dont la langue dominante est le français. Il me semble que ces problèmes d’inégalité ne seront pas résolus jusqu’à ce que nous parlions tous une seule langue universelle!
It’s probably easier for a German speaker to learn English than it is for an Anglophone to learn German. Is it easier for a French speaker to learn English than German or Spanish? I don’t know. It depends! Moving from French to Spanish to Italian, especially if you’ve learned some Latin, may be a lot easier than moving from either of these languages to English. And that’s just a small sample of European languages. Even your ‘comparative’ claim is an over generalization. Source language, target language, and circumstances all make comparisons a senseless task.
All of this is compatible with English being de facto ‘easier to learn’—it is because it is already the lingua franca, and so everyone learns a little bit of it no matter what. When Latin or French were the lingual Franca I gather they were easier to learn than English. The causal arrow doesn’t go in the direction you seem to think.
Did you miss the parts of my first reply where I mentioned “holding all other variables constant” and the “many factors at play” in this conversation? I was quite open about the fact that my claims are indeed generalizations. Maybe you find these hedges to be insufficient, but I don’t think I can be convicted of ignoring the complexity of the situation in as strong a sense as you propose here.
I might venture to disagree with the assertion that “all comparisons are a senseless task,” at least insofar as you intend this to mean “ANY comparison is a senseless task”. It seems to me that it is possible to do meaningful studies of the comparative ease of language learning, provided that we attend carefully to which variables we’re interrogating. For instance, one might meaningfully compare the speed at which speaker A (an anglophone) learns French to that at which speaker B (a lusophone) learns French, provided that A and B are approximately equal in cognitive abilities, as well as all other relevant factors. Perhaps this will be difficult to pull off in a statistically-reliable manner, but in principle it seems possible.
Also, regarding your remark about “the causal arrow not going in the direction I seem to think”, you appear to have misinterpreted me. I never suggested that English became an international lingua franca *because* of its comparative simplicity (there are a number of historical reasons for this and they have little to do with the linguistic profile of English). I simply pointed out that in certain aspects of its grammar, English happens to be simpler than many other languages, which I think belongs in the “pro” column, if we’re tallying its virtues as an international language. Causality never actually came up. That being said, I think you bring up an interesting point about the very fact of being a lingua franca making a certain language a bit easier to learn. That could very well be the case.
That was in your second reply, which I thought was a duplicate, so I missed your hedging (which appears neither in your original post, to which I was replying, nor in your first reply). It helps though it ends up undermining your original point and conceding to the critics.
As for causality, fair enough. But I still think that the comparative easiness of English (if there is one) is largely extrinsic and due to the legacy of British-American international dominance in the 20th century more than intrinsic features of the language itself. Nietzsche was proficient in German, French, Italian, Greek and Latin but apparently not English. Go figure.
Ah, yes. Sorry about the dual reply. I posted the first one, but then I thought my internet had stopped working so I drafted another, which I actually thought was better.
Can I ask: What do you construe as my “original point”? I ask because I’ve said quite a lot at this point and specificity will help me to self-evaluate a bit.
I do find your ‘extrinsic’ thesis very interesting. I don’t know if we actually disagree very strongly, as I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge that extrinsic factors have played the role you describe. Although we should of course be careful to differentiate between ‘ease’ and ‘popularity’. It occurred to me that we might be arguing over what the *primary* reason behind English’s comparative ease is, but I don’t even know that I’m committed to the idea that intrinsic factors are ‘primary’.
At any rate, I’ll be interested to hear how you think I’ve undermined my original point.
Since you didn’t touch the ‘all comparisons are a senseless task’ thesis in your reply I’ll assume we can leave that topic aside for now.
It does seem like we largely agree. I took your original point to be that English was an easier target language, but you’ve qualified it enough that it’s not belaboring the disagreement.
Thanks for continuing to engage thoughtfully.
I think InterestedAnglophone’s point is best interpreted as a statistical generalisation. As others have noted, learning a language that is closely related to a language you already know is typically easier than learning an unrelated one. Even with unrelated languages, certain typological similarities make learning easier (if you already know Basque, you will likely struggle less with the Tibetan ergative alignment system than if you only know, say, English and Japanese). Now, we can average out over all potential language pairs. To make the measure even more ‘objective’, let us only consider how easy or difficult speakers would find learning the target language if they learned it under equivalent circumstances. Given the variation we actually see, it would be surprising if every language were on average as easy to learn as any other. It is much more likely that some languages are on average easier to learn than others. InterestedAnglophone is suggesting that English is such a language.
Do we have any epistemic access to this measurement? It is certainly important to be cautious, and keep in mind how the hegemony of English affects the learning we can observe. However, I think we can make some guesses. For example, we know that further-language learners find tone systems difficult! Even learners who speak related languages with a tones (e.g. Mandarin speakers learning Cantonese) report that they find tones especially difficult. Thus, other things being equal, tonal languages are harder to master than non-tonal ones. We also know that it is much easier to learn a language if it has a similar phonological inventory than your mother tongue. English has a typologically relatively unusual sound inventory. So, that will make English more difficult to learn. We also know that creole and pidgin languages tend to have little inflectional morphology, even if the substrate and superstate language have complex morphologies. To simplify, pidgin languages emerge if speakers try to communicate in a language, but they are not exposed to enough data to acquire the target language as it is spoken by native speakers. This at least suggest that languages with little inflectional morphology are easier to learn. So, this may indeed make English easier to learn.
Does the measurement matter? It probably isn’t very useful for predicting individual learning. The relation between the native and target language (as well as the motivation and talent of the learner) are much more important for that. However, averages matter. If we want to plan a language course for students from many different linguistic backgrounds, say, it is useful to know how fast the average student will learn. Despite the effects of things like English’s hegemony, the measurement may be an important indicator here.
You mention that English’s current hegemony isn’t due to its intrinsic features. That is certainly true. However, it is worth noting that French and Latin were likely never as widely spoken as a second language during their periods of hegemony as English is now. The obvious reasons for that are new technologies in travel and communication. However, it is a hypothesis worth exploring how this relates to English’s intrinsic features.
A fantastically interesting and precise comment. Milan is obviously better-informed and better-equipped on this matter than I could claim to be!
Very interesting and helpful. Thanks.
Great project! My main problem -but there was no question about that in the survey – is that publishing or presenting in two (or more) languages takes a lot of time (if one wants their work to be available in different languages). The constant back and forth, changing slides from one language to another… It’s a lot.
I agree that this is a major disadvantage for non-native anglophones that we need to address in the academic English-speaking community. One way of doing so would be for more of us native anglophones to develop at least some proficiency in common non-English languages. I think we also ought to normalize speaking English while also using vocabulary from one’s own native language (thus creating hybrids like Franglish, Danglish and Spanglish).
For what it’s worth, I’ve dealt with similar struggles while reading and presenting in French and German, with the difference being that it’s most common for international conferences to be held primarily in English, so I don’t face the struggle quite as often.
I really like your idea of normalizing hybrids! I think where I’m working right now (at Utrecht) this sort of normalization may actually be what many of us already do unconsciously, as we’re not native English speakers and so can’t easily notice our colleagues’ deviations from native English and correct them.
If you also know German and French and presented in those languages, I wonder if, as a native English speaker, you have ever felt somewhat disadvantaged when German or French native speakers immediately switch to English (say, at a conference in Germany or France) as soon as they notice you are a native English speaker (preventing you from getting a chance to practice your German or French)? I think this well-meaning (but potentially epistemically unjust – for native English speakers) switch to English might be common among my fellow Germans. Has this happened to you at a philosophy conference or so?
Ah, this is a very interesting topic! Naturally, I have indeed encountered this tendency among native French and German speakers; my lousy American accent is what gives me away (I’m working on it!). I had never considered that this (as you say, likely well-meaning) practice might constitute a form of epistemic injustice, but it’s certainly plausible.
This type of thing did always strike me as a way of “flexing”, to use a nice slang term, on me as an anglophone. As an American, I’ve noticed an insecurity in myself regarding the stereotypes generally attached to my nationality (that we’re ignorant, uncultured monolinguals who don’t care to educate themselves, etc.). So, when I make conversation in French and German, only to be met with a response in English (and, let’s be honest, often a rather imperfect form of English), the message sometimes seems to be “No, no. You’ll not rise to our level. Instead, we’ll sink to yours. We, after all, are the polyglots.”
This impression of mine probably has more to do with my own flaws and foibles than any malicious intent on the part of my interlocutors, but that’s often been my experience.
Glad you mention this (but very sorry to hear that these things did happen to you!). I like the way you put it and I think it’s regrettable that this kind of reverse stereotyping occurs too (i.e., German, French, etc. speakers assuming native English speakers are somehow less proficient in foreign language proficiency and need assistance as soon as they say a word in German or French with an (e.g.) American accent).
I hope you mentioned this issue in the survey. Do you maybe know of empirical studies on the phenomenon? I think it’s important to also keep these potential epistemic disadvantages for native English speakers in the picture when looking at English as the academic lingua franca.
I want to echo this point. I am Canadian and started learning French at 9 in school. I loved it and pursued it through university, along with extracurricular stays in Quebec, etc. and independent study to perfect my skills. I was assessed at a ‘C’ level of proficiency by the Government of Canada, which was the highest level a non-native speaker can get. Yet STILL whenever I speak in French to anyone, they will hear that I have an accent and immediately switch to English. It’s frustrating, but not the end of the world. However, it does feel annoying to hear non-native English speakers complain about Anglophones when they don’t really ‘let’ us practice and develop our language skills with native speakers. The only place I have not experienced this immediate shift to English is in French-speaking Africa, where people are extremely happy to continue in French.
Indeed – it can sometimes seem as though we’re stereotyped as being monolinguals, and then denied the opportunity to escape the stereotype when attempting to converse in our non-native languages. One is tempted to label this something of a self-fulfilling prophesy, no?
Sadly, I can only speak from anecdotal experience. Certainly, any studies that have been done on this question would strike me as interesting as well!
Thanks so much for this, Juliette. I agree with you and have the same problem. I hope you brought it up in the free response box at the end? Might LLMs make things easier for us moving forward? Do you use ChatGPT occasionally for these purposes?
As a non-native English speaker who started learning English at the age of 5, I almost felt like I was learning a new language again when I began doing philosophy seriously in college. For me, engaging with philosophy requires a different mode of speech, which I often avoid using when talking with non-philosophers. I suspect that I wouldn’t be able to do philosophy in any language other than English simply because I lack the necessary mode of speech in those languages.
Great point! Can you say a bit more on what you mean by the ‘mode of speech’ in philosophy and why it might be challenging for you?
I am a native English speaker, and similarly find that academic English requires a different mode of speech.
As a native English speaker, learning academic English was presumably less challenging for me than for non-native speakers. I was already thinking in English, so it was just a matter of learning vocabulary, learning how to use it appropriately, and learning how to construct phrases and sentences in an academic (?) way.
Nonetheless, there was a learning curve. In graduate school, in particular, I had to learn a lot about my native language so that my writing did not sound dumb. I read a ton of papers by old British guys and tried to copy what they did; then, I made extensive use of proofing tools to make sure that I got it right.
I’ll put it this way: the English users in my community, growing up, did not speak in academic English, and many of their sentence constructions and word choices would be considered improper. I used (and still use) colloquial versions of English – with their colourful but grammatically incorrect sentence structures – when speaking with other native speakers from similar backgrounds. Using academic English has become much much easier over time, and I can fluently switch to using it when I talk. Still, I have to be careful when I write so that I do not fall into the structures used in my home dialect.