Language difference has become a public focus of debates around the alleged failure of European policies on multiculturalism. Integration into the dominant host language of the community is seen as the only desirable outcome for national language policies. This article argues for a wholly different approach to language alterity, drawing on understandings provided by translation, the relationship between time and place and a social ontology of conflict where language features as an important actor. Underlining the necessity of the ontological dimension of conflict for the emergence of identity in the case of language, plurality involves accepting that there is no final, definitive reconciliation of opposites but that any arrangement is a provisional, unstable equilibrium which does not rule out further conflict in the future. This understanding of language conflict provides a way of thinking about contemporary multilingual and multicultural societies in a manner that moves beyond revealed universalism and schismatic relativism. © The Author(s) 2012.