When Speaking Two Languages Is A Way To Protest

Most people believe that speaking two languages is a skill or just something that looks good on a resume. But for some communities, being bilingual is not just practical. In certain places, speaking your language is an act of resistance, or it can be. 

Around the world, people have fought to keep their languages alive in the face of governments that have tried to erase them. In those cases bilingualism becomes a form of protest, pride, and even survival. Many powerful groups throughout history have tried to force people to speak only one language, usually the language of the dominant culture or government. Why? Because language is tied to identity, memory, and power. If you take away someone’s language, you’re also trying to take away their culture and control how they think and express themselves.

For decades, the Kurdish people in Turkey weren’t allowed to speak their language in public. Kurdish wasn’t taught in schools, used in courts, or allowed on TV. Just using it could get people arrested or punished. But the Kurdish people never gave up. They passed the language down secretly in homes, sang songs in Kurdish, and even opened illegal schools. Today, even though some rules have changed, Kurdish is still not fully accepted in many official places. 

In Spain, the Catalan language was banned under the Franco dictatorship (1939–1975). Catalan speakers had to switch to Spanish in public life, even their street signs and names were changed.

But the Catalan people held on. They printed books in secret. They taught the language at home. After Franco’s death, Catalan made a huge comeback, and today it’s spoken proudly in schools, on TV, and in protests. Many young people in Catalonia use Catalan to express their political identity and demand independence.