Do Languages Move Faster Than Borders?

On why language change today can happen within just a few years

For a long time, we assumed that languages move slowly.

That they are anchored to territories, shaped by generations, and stabilized by institutions.

Borders might shift, populations might migrate, governments might rise and fall—but language, we believed, would lag behind.

The past decade has quietly dismantled this assumption.

Across different parts of the world, we are witnessing something that classical sociolinguistics rarely anticipated: language practices can change within just a few years.

Not because grammar suddenly evolves, nor because speakers “forget” a language, but because the meaning of language changes faster than its structure.

Languages today move with people, not with maps.

They respond to safety, opportunity, exclusion, mobility, and power.

They adjust long before institutions do.

This essay begins from a simple but unsettling question:

Do languages now move faster than the borders of states?

Looking across diverse contexts—from Australia and Canada to Switzerland, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Africa, and Eastern Europe—we can observe a common pattern.

Multilingualism is no longer a stable social condition; it is a dynamic process shaped by accelerated demographic, political, and urban change.

What emerges is not a story about how many languages a society contains, but about how societies understand language: as infrastructure or ideology, as resource or threat, as capacity for action—or as a test of belonging.

In this sense, contemporary language change is less about linguistics in the narrow sense and more about how societies manage complexity.

And perhaps that is why it has become so fast.

Australia: multilingualism as public infrastructure (not identity politics)

Australia’s approach to language is often misread as merely “pragmatic.”

In reality, it represents a carefully developed model of functional multilingualism, shaped by sustained demographic transformation rather than ideological debate.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (Census 2021):

• 29.8% of the population is foreign-born, one of the highest shares among OECD countries;

• over 300 languages are spoken in Australian homes;

• nearly 22% of residents do not speak English as their first home language.

  
  

These figures are not abstract. Census data also show that almost five million residents report limited proficiency in English, creating measurable risks in healthcare, education, and legal settings. Government evaluations link language barriers to higher rates of medical error and lower institutional trust among migrant populations, which has driven long-term investment in interpreter services and multilingual public communication.

Already in the 1980s and 1990s, Australia moved away from assimilationist thinking toward what sociolinguists describe as instrumental multilingualism (Clyne, 2005; Lo Bianco, 2014).

Recent research (Piller, 2016; Blackledge & Creese, 2021) consistently shows that:

• sustained support for community languages in schools, healthcare, and local administration reduces the transaction costs of integration—improving educational outcomes, lowering health risks, and increasing trust in institutions;

• multilingual public services do not delay English acquisition, but often accelerate it by reducing early-stage exclusion.

  
  

Australia demonstrates that multilingualism need not be framed as cultural symbolism.

Here, it functions as public infrastructure—and infrastructure works best when it is barely noticed, when it simply allows people, information, and services to flow.

South Africa: when normative multilingualism collides with material reality

South Africa is frequently cited as an example of linguistic ambition: 11 official languages, constitutionally protected since 1996.

Yet this ambition has generated one of the most fundamental questions in contemporary sociolinguistics:

Is formal language equality without institutional capacity itself a form of inequality?

According to Statistics South Africa:

• more than 75% of secondary and tertiary education is conducted in English;

• African languages such as isiZulu, isiXhosa, and Sesotho remain marginal in teaching materials, academic publishing, and administration.

  
  

Educational assessments sharpen this picture.

Data from national literacy surveys and SACMEQ indicate that learners who transition to English-medium instruction without sustained mother-tongue education perform 30–40% worse in reading comprehension than peers who receive longer first-language support.

Research by Heugh (2015), Alexander (2013), and Banda (2020) shows that English functions less as a neutral bridge than as a multiplier of existing socio-economic inequality, privileging those with early access to it.

South Africa, in short, has multilingualism in its constitution—but not in its budget. And language without a budget, as Neville Alexander famously observed, is a symbol without operational power.

South Africa exposes the limits of idealized language policy.

Multilingualism is not only an ethical choice; it is an organizational project requiring teachers, materials, terminology, and long-term institutional investment.

Ukraine, Russia, Belarus: language as a variable of power (not culture)

Over the past decade, Eastern Europe has become one of the most revealing natural laboratories for studying rapid language shifts.

Ukraine: one of the fastest documented language shifts in Europe

Survey data from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) reveal a dramatic and unusually rapid transformation in everyday language use. Between 2012 and 2023, the proportion of respondents reporting Ukrainian as their primary language of daily communication rose from approximately 45% to over 70%, with the steepest increase occurring after 2022.

What makes this shift sociolinguistically exceptional is not only its magnitude, but its speed and structure.

First, the change cuts across age groups, regions, and previous language profiles, including areas that had long been predominantly Russian-speaking. This immediately rules out the most common explanation for language change—generational replacement.

Instead, what we observe is large-scale adult language reorientation, something classical sociolinguistics has typically assumed to be slow, partial, or unstable.

Second, longitudinal surveys show that this is not merely a change in declared identity, but in actual language practice. Respondents report switching languages not only in public or symbolic contexts, but in family life, workplace communication, and informal interaction. In several regions, Ukrainian has become the default language of interaction even among speakers who had used Russian almost exclusively for decades.

Third—and this is theoretically crucial—the shift is only weakly correlated with formal language policy. While legislation played a role in setting symbolic boundaries, research demonstrates that the decisive factor was a profound change in the social meaning of language (Kulyk, 2023).

Ukrainian ceased to be perceived merely as:

• a marker of ethnic heritage, or

• a language associated with rural or western regions,

and became instead:

• a language of personal and collective safety,

• a signal of moral alignment and trust,

• and a marker of future orientation, both socially and geopolitically.

  
  

Recent studies in sociolinguistics and political psychology note that in wartime contexts, language choice becomes a risk-sensitive practice. Speakers align their linguistic behavior with what signals protection, belonging, and continuity. In this sense, Ukrainian functioned less as a national symbol and more as a social coordination mechanism.

Perhaps most striking is the durability of the change. Follow-up surveys indicate low rates of reversion even in regions distant from the front lines, suggesting that the shift is not merely situational but has begun to stabilize

into new linguistic norms.

Ukraine challenges several long-standing assumptions in language theory:

• that adult speakers rarely change dominant languages;

• that language shift requires long-term institutional pressure;

• that identity change precedes language change.

  
  

Here, the order is reversed. Language changed first, rapidly and collectively, because its meaning changed. Identity, in many cases, followed.

Ukraine thus demonstrates that language is not only a cultural system or a legal category, but a highly responsive social technology, capable of rapid recalibration when conditions of security, trust, and future expectation shift.

In this sense, Ukraine represents one of the clearest contemporary examples of how languages can move faster than borders—not by crossing them, but by redefining what they mean.

Russia: formal multilingualism, actual centralization

The Russian Federation officially recognizes dozens of regional languages. Yet educational statistics show a steady decline in institutional support.

Since the mid-2000s, the number of schools offering sustained instruction in regional languages has fallen sharply, with enrollment now accounting for well under 10% of pupils in most republics (Zamyatin, 2021).

Here, language choice aligns directly with mobility trajectories.

Russian functions as the sole language of vertical advancement, driven not only by political pressure but by the economic logic of centralization.

Belarus: language as a latent symbol

Belarusian has long held official status but low everyday usage. Recent studies (Marples, 2022) show renewed symbolic and cultural engagement—especially among younger generations, civil society, and the diaspora.

Language returns not primarily as a communicative tool, but as an ethical position.

This region demonstrates that language is not merely cultural heritage.

It is a dynamic variable of power, security, and perceived future—and it can change rapidly when those conditions shift.

Switzerland: when multilingualism becomes cognitive economy

Switzerland is often described as a model of regulated multilingualism. Yet recent research suggests that the most significant transformation lies elsewhere: multilingualism is increasingly experienced as everyday cognitive practice, not institutional design.

According to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office:

• nearly 40% of residents use at least two languages daily;

• in metropolitan areas such as Zurich and Geneva, this figure exceeds 50%.

Studies since 2018 (Lüdi; Werlen; Pandolfi) show the spread of receptive multilingualism—understanding without speaking—and a shift in code-switching from identity signaling to communicative efficiency.

Speakers often no longer perceive language boundaries as borders. Language shifts occur because a situation demands less effort, greater clarity, or faster response.

English in this context is not a new hegemon, but a temporary operational interface.

Switzerland illustrates a move from multilingualism as political compromise to multilingualism as cognitive economy.

Language becomes a matter of orientation in complexity, not of symbolic allegiance.

France: the monolingual ideal and the paradox of invisible multilingualism

France remains one of the clearest examples of an assimilationist language model.

French is not only the language of the state but the embodiment of the Republic.

Yet empirical data complicate this picture. INSEE statistics show that in the Paris metropolitan area, over one third of children grow up in households where at least one language other than French is spoken regularly.

Despite this, fewer than 5% of these linguistic resources are institutionally acknowledged within the school system.

Longitudinal studies (OECD; Extra & Yağmur) show that when socio-economic factors are controlled for, multilingualism itself has no negative effect on educational outcomes. The disadvantage arises when institutions fail to engage multilingual repertoires pedagogically.

France demonstrates how a strong common language can coexist with institutional blindness to real linguistic practices. Multilingualism is not suppressed—it is rendered invisible.

Canada: language as a measurable social variable

Canada is one of the few contexts where language has become a systematically measured social variable.

Longitudinal data from Statistics Canada show that immigrants who reach functional proficiency in an official language within the first five years experience income growth rates up to 20% higher than late learners.

At the same time, maintaining a first language has no statistically significant negative effect on employment or integration outcomes.

Studies further show that children who retain their first language often achieve higher literacy in both languages, linked to enhanced metalinguistic awareness (Cummins, 2021).

Canada empirically dismantles the “either–or” myth. Integration and linguistic continuity are not in conflict—conflict emerges only when policy assumes they are.

Bosnia and Herzegovina: institutionalized parallelism

Bosnia and Herzegovina represents one of the most intensively studied cases in critical sociolinguistics.

Here, language functions as an organizing principle of society, not as a communicative bridge.

UNESCO and OSCE reports show that the “two schools under one roof” system produces parallel monolingualisms, translating linguistic difference into rigid identity boundaries.

Demographic data sharpen the picture further. Since 2013, Bosnia and Herzegovina has lost over 10% of its population, with emigration concentrated among younger, educated cohorts.

A language overloaded with identity offers little future mobility. Young people increasingly treat language instrumentally—or leave it behind altogether.

Bosnia and Herzegovina shows what happens when language policy fails to generate future orientation. A language without a future tense cannot function as a social bridge.

Instead of a conclusion: language as a capacity for movement

Taken together, these cases reveal a consistent pattern: languages do not decline because societies are multilingual. They falter when institutions misunderstand what language does.

Multilingualism works when it is:

• functional rather than ideological,

• resourced rather than merely declared,

• recognized in practice rather than only in law,

• and when it offers orientation rather than tests of belonging.

  
  

Perhaps the most important lesson of recent years is this:

multilingualism is not a problem to be solved once and for all. It is a capacity that must be continuously maintained.

And that capacity is not primarily linguistic. It is social.

References – literature (selected)

Alexander, N. (2013). Thoughts on the New South Africa.

Banda, F. (2020). African Languages and Development.

Blackledge, A., & Creese, A. (2021). Language and Superdiversity.

Clyne, M. (2005). Australia’s Language Potential.

Cummins, J. (2021). Rethinking the Education of Multilingual Learners.Heugh, K. (2015). Epistemologies in Multilingual Education.

Kulyk, V. (2023). Language and Identity in Wartime Ukraine.

Lo Bianco, J. (2014). Domesticating Multiculturalism.

Lüdi, G. (2019–2023). Urban Multilingualism in Switzerland.

Marples, D. (2022). Belarus: A Denationalized Nation.

Piller, I. (2016). Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice.

Zamyatin, K. (2021). Language Policy in Russia.

Statistical and institutional sources

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2021). Census of Population and Housing

Statistics South Africa (2019–2023). Education and Literacy Surveys

Swiss Federal Statistical Office (2018–2023). Language Use Surveys

INSEE (France). Immigration, Language and Education Data

Statistics Canada. Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB)

Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (2012–2023). Language Use Surveys

UNESCO (2019–2022). Education and Segregation in Bosnia and Herzegovina

OSCE (2020). Two Schools Under One Roof – Update

SACMEQ. Monitoring Educational Quality in Southern and Eastern Africa