Is Language Learning Cultural Appropriation? My Honest Answer

A reader named William recently sent me a question I have a lot to say about. He’s American, has been learning Spanish and Hindi, and has run into people who question whether he should be learning those languages at all.

The argument goes something like this: in the current cultural climate, is language learning cultural appropriation? Isn’t there something disrespectful, or at least suspect, about it?

William wanted to know if I’ve ever run into this kind of criticism, and how I’d respond to it. So here it is. The question of whether language learning is cultural appropriation is one I have strong feelings about, and I’m going to lay out my view as honestly as I can.

A quick warning: I do not have a lot of patience with the idea that learning somebody else’s language is a form of appropriation. I think the notion is, frankly, ridiculous.

But it’s out there, people genuinely encounter it, and it deserves a proper response rather than a dismissive wave. So let’s actually think it through.

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What Does Cultural Appropriation Actually Mean?

Before going any further, it’s worth defining the term, because so much of the heat around this topic comes from people using the phrase loosely.

The Wikipedia definition is a reasonable place to start: cultural appropriation is the adoption of elements of one culture by members of another culture.

It becomes controversial, the definition continues, when members of a dominant culture appropriate from disadvantaged minority cultures, particularly indigenous cultures and those that have lived under colonial rule.

The elements in question can include religious traditions, fashion, symbols, language and music.

The crucial bit, for our purposes, is the political framing underneath all this. The argument is essentially an extension of the critique of colonialism.

To put it very simply: because Britain colonised large parts of the world in the past, someone like me has no real right to borrow, use or in any way benefit from the cultural elements of those former colonies, India being the obvious example. The same logic gets applied to Americans and to white Western people generally.

That’s the working definition. Now what do we actually do with it?

Is Language Learning Cultural Appropriation? Why Some Say Yes

On the face of it, the broader concern is not unreasonable. The world is a nasty place. Some nasty things have happened.

The dominant powers in the world today are often dominant because of questionable practices in the past, whether that’s colonialism, slavery or any number of other things. Nobody serious would deny that.

And I’m genuinely sympathetic to people from minority backgrounds, especially those growing up in Western countries.

I think many people in my position — white, British, middle class, living comfortably in the UK — have very little understanding of what it’s like to be ethnically Chinese or Indian growing up here.

The low-level things people deal with daily: walking into a shop and being asked if they speak English, despite having grown up here, despite English being their mother tongue.

The way a waiter might look at them. Small things, repeated endlessly, that I will simply never experience. Raising awareness of all that is well-intentioned and important.

So I’ll grant the underlying point. People in my situation often have a very one-sided view of the world and will probably do things, regularly, that come across as offensive or disrespectful to people in minority cultures. Fine. That’s worth knowing.

But here’s what’s happened. The more radical sides of the conversation have taken that basic concept and stretched it across every aspect of our culture, to the point where anyone who even takes an interest in another culture is now somehow appropriating it.

William, who wants to learn Hindi or Spanish, is suddenly behaving immorally because, in his privileged American situation, he’s apparently exploiting Indian people and their cultural heritage for his own amusement.

I’ve seen this play out across society. An American girl wore a Chinese dress to her prom and was pilloried on social media. The British chef Jamie Oliver was accused of cultural appropriation for adapting a Jamaican jerk chicken recipe. There are countless examples. But let’s focus on language, because that’s the question.

Why Intentions Matter More Than Anything

For me, the single most important thing in any of these social justice debates is intent. If you actually take the time to think through why someone is doing what they’re doing, you can resolve an enormous amount of the apparent conflict.

So what is William’s intention in learning Spanish or Hindi? Is it to misappropriate other people’s cultures for his own amusement and gratification?

You could argue, I suppose, that all language learning has an element of personal benefit. Of course it does. We learn languages partly for our own development. It’s hard to deny that.

But much more importantly, William is taking an interest in those cultures and those people. He’s choosing to step outside his own world and engage with someone else’s.

Which leads to the simple question I’d put to anyone who criticises a person for learning another language:

• Do you think it’s desirable that we try to understand other people and other cultures?
• Is the world a better place when William has a greater understanding of Indian people through studying their language and culture?
• Or is it better when he sits at home in complete ignorance of them?

The answer is obvious. The world is a better place when we understand one another. And learning someone’s language is the deepest gesture of understanding we can make, because it’s the closest you can come to seeing the world the way they see it.

The Foot On The Train Analogy

Sam Harris has a useful illustration of why intent matters so much. Imagine you’re on a crowded train and someone steps on your foot. It hurts. They’ve infringed on your space and caused you pain.

Now imagine they turn around and say, “I’m so sorry, I lost my balance.” That would be the end of it. You’d move on. You wouldn’t dream of berating them.

Now imagine the same act, but this time they turn around and say, “You were on my side of the carriage.” That’s a completely different conversation. The physical act was identical. What changed everything was the intent behind it.

Apply that to language learning. If someone learns another language because they want to communicate, to understand, to connect, that is one thing.

If somehow, in some unimaginable scenario, they’re learning it as an act of mockery or exploitation, that would be entirely different.

But in practice, almost nobody is doing the latter. People learn languages because they want to engage with the world more deeply. That’s a good thing, full stop.

Do We Want People To Understand Other Cultures, Or Not?

This is what the whole debate ultimately comes down to. It’s a binary choice. Do we want people in the West to make an effort to understand other cultures, or do we not?

Because if the answer is yes, then William learning Hindi and Spanish is exactly the kind of thing we should be celebrating.

And if the answer is no — if the position is that Western people shouldn’t be learning the languages of formerly colonised peoples — then where does that leave us?

It leaves us in a place where the only direction of language learning permitted is one-way. People from minority cultures and former colonies can learn English, but English speakers can’t learn their languages in return.

That doesn’t sound like a corrective to colonialism. It sounds like an extension of it. If anything, it locks English in as the global default and shuts down the kind of two-way cultural exchange that might actually balance things out.

Taken to its logical conclusion, this view would mean nobody should be learning English any more, and we should all be learning the languages of historically oppressed peoples. Honestly, I’d be perfectly happy with that.

But that isn’t what the critics are arguing for either. The position seems to be that Westerners shouldn’t learn other languages at all. Which, when you spell it out, is incoherent.

You Can’t Separate Language From Culture

There’s another point worth making, which is that you cannot meaningfully learn a language without also learning the culture it lives inside. The two are inseparable.

I’ve had questions before from people asking whether it’s important to learn about the culture of a language they’re studying, and I always find myself slightly bewildered by the question. How would you even do it otherwise?

Take Japanese as an example. For an English speaker, “yes” and “no” feel like simple, neutral concepts. In Japanese, they’re not. Saying no in Japanese is culturally loaded in a way that saying no in English isn’t. Understanding why is a question of cultural literacy.

So learning a language is, by its nature, an act of cultural engagement. Anyone genuinely doing it is, by definition, making an effort to understand another people. That is the opposite of appropriation. It’s closer to its inverse.

What To Do If You're Accused Of Cultural Appropriation

William, and anyone else who has run into this kind of criticism: my advice is simple. Don’t engage with it.

In my experience, this sort of accusation mostly lives online. It thrives on social media because the platform rewards it. Saying these things in public, on a feed where your friends and followers can see, earns social status points. It makes you look virtuous.

I struggle to imagine someone saying this kind of thing to my face in real life unless they were completely deranged. It’s a performance for an audience, not a sincere position.

And when people are operating like that, they’re not really thinking about you at all. What’s going on in their mind is, “How can I make myself look better in the eyes of my peers?” That’s not the basis for an honest conversation. So the best response is to smile, walk away and go and talk to someone else.

I want to be fair here. I’m sitting in a fairly privileged bubble in London, and I’m sure I have blind spots of my own on this. If someone genuinely wants to challenge me on it from a place of good faith, I’m open to that.

But the kind of accusation William is describing is not coming from good faith. It’s coming from somewhere else entirely. You don’t owe it your time.

Keep Learning Languages, Keep Learning About People

The whole reason any of us learn languages is to open up the world. To talk to people we couldn’t otherwise talk to. To read things we couldn’t otherwise read. To experience places, films, music and conversations we’d otherwise be locked out of.

The idea that language learning is cultural appropriation turns the entire enterprise on its head. Engaging with another culture, putting in the years of work it takes to actually understand it, is the opposite of disrespect. It’s one of the most respectful things a person can do.

Yes, you have to be sensitive. Yes, you have to be aware that there are perspectives you don’t share and experiences you’ll never fully understand. That’s part of the work.

But the answer isn’t to retreat into your own corner of the world and stay there. The answer is to keep going — to keep learning languages, keep meeting people, keep paying attention.

So William, and anyone else asking this same question: don’t let the noise put you off. The world needs more people who care enough to learn another language, not fewer. Keep going.

Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.