Peter’s September 2025 Blog

English isn’t English

I was moderating a panel on maritime decarbonisation in Dubai recently when I realised, somewhere between a question on propulsion systems and a polite laugh, that I hadn’t followed much of what had just been said.

The sound system didn’t help, but the real problem was language. The discussion was in English, yet I was the only native speaker. The others—eloquent, quick, confident—spoke English shaped by other contexts and languages: Arabic, Spanish and Italian. I could follow most of it, but occasionally lost the thread, while others in the room—whose first languages weren’t English either, but maybe shared that Arabic-shaped English—understood everything perfectly.

That’s when it struck me, as it has so often in my work with MtS: English isn’t English.

Everywhere I go—from ports in Busan to terminals in Rotterdam—English is a common currency of business and conversation. But often it’s not my English. For years I unconsciously assumed that my version—English-English—was something like the neutral reference point, the hub from which all other versions radiated. Despite trans-Atlantic squabbling between Brits and Americans about pavements and sidewalks, insects and bugs, petrol and gas, it isn’t.

The English I speak is one dialect among many. English is the most widely spoken language in the world, but most English speakers are not native speakers at all; the largest group is in India. The centre of English has long since moved away from England. There is no single hub now—only a network of voices, and with each the language wraps itself into the shapes of local context as well the global need to communicate.

In that sense, perhaps the greatest thing England ever gave the world was English itself. What began as the language of a damp little island in the eastern Atlantic has become the shared possession of the world. Once a tool of empire, English has been taken by those it once claimed to rule and reshaped, extended, improvised. Its strength perhaps now lies in its generosity. It has been given away.

You see this clearly at sea. On any commercial vessel, the crew might hail from half a dozen countries. None are native English speakers, yet life aboard is conducted to a considerable extent in English. Orders are given, procedures followed, documentation completed, jokes shared, prayers said. Grammar bends, accents may clash, but communication flows.

The shift of perspective in this has changed more than the way I listen. It has changed how I see our work. We are an organisation dedicated to the welfare of a diverse global workforce with many languages, but this includes a shared possession of English. In seafarer welfare, just as in language, there is no single centre. The support worker in Manila, the chaplain in Lagos, the welfare officer in Rotterdam—each is part of a much larger whole. What we do locally is the very substance of our purpose, but it principally makes sense in the context of the global web of service and commerce that connects us all.

When something we think of as “ours” becomes everyone’s, it can be unsettling. It’s what sociologists call a “decentring” experience. We lose the comforting illusion that our way is the standard, or our place is the centre. But that loss is also a gain. It invites humility. It reminds us that belonging is not about ownership, but participation.

At that Dubai conference, as I strained to follow a conversation that others seemed to grasp with ease, I found the experience oddly reassuring. It was a small example of a larger truth: that meaning is made not at the centre but in the connections between us.

So now, when I hear the many Englishes of the world—the shipboard chatter, the conference exchanges, the WhatsApp messages from crews at sea—I hear not distortion but vitality. Each voice is proof that language, like humanity and the compassionate care that MtS offers, is at its best when shared, networked, integrated.

Because, in the end, English isn’t English. It’s us—all of us—speaking, listening, and trying, across every sea, to understand and to shape a better world for seafarers.