“Give Me English,” by Ai Jiang (江艾)

Screenshot Story #4 of 31: The Best Science Fiction of the Year 8, ed. by Neil Clarke Part of a series: Reading Science Fiction at 75. The first essay. “Give Me English,” by Ai Jiang, is a metaphor for understanding languages and what it means to become an immigrant. The story feels like science fiction because everyone in this future has a language database (Langbase) in their head, and words are the universal monetary unit. Poor people have to sell their words to pay rent, and some eventually become mute because they run out of words in their langbase. Gillian lives in New York. She is an immigrant from China. Gillian came to America because she couldn’t compete in the Chinese education system. That’s a real practice today. Because Gillian needs to learn English, she sells off her Chinese words to buy English words. But to survive in expensive New York, she eventually needed to sell her newly acquired English words too. Her friend Jorry is well off because he gambles with words and…