What People Can't Take From You

Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

I will go

Globalization. What is it doing to our world? Is it flattening it, as Thomas Friedman has phrased it? Are all peoples unique and sometimes, frankly ridiculous strands of tread being spun together, to form a color with no meaning, no passion, no life?

There are two main components of culture: language and religion. Together these entities are able to create something magnificently unique within us. They are the two fundamental things which we are taught when we are small. And hopefully, they are something that we will cherish for the eternity of our lives. However, both language and religion are being marred by globalization.

As Robin Hood has pointed out, English has become the world's lingua franca. As such, languages everywhere are dying out. Ethnologue considers 516 languages as nearly extinct. The few older speakers of these languages, who are still living, are not passing on their language to their children. Every time a language crosses the threshold and becomes extinct, we, as people, lose something. I know not what can be done. However, I am puzzled to think of what might happen if we ourselves attempted to preserve a language. A language is considered to be dead when there are no people who speak it as their first language. Therefore, if one was to raise their children speaking a dead language only then, in reality there would be a native speaker, and, as such, the language would no longer be dead. I know that this method of revival would not work for the majority of languages, as it requires, among other things, that the language be written down. I also know that the practicality of doing this is highly debatable. But then again, since when has practicality been a concern of mine.

Religion has also been changed in the face of globalization. It would appear to me that many people are increasingly not believing the beliefs which they proclaim to believe. People are more concerned with the "freedom of religion" than the actual religion which they are a part of. What happened to the time when religion was something to die for?

"MacIan turned upon him with a white face and bitter lip. 'Sir,' he said, 'talk about the principle of love as much as you like. You seem to me colder than a lump of stone; but I am willing to believe that you may at some time have loved a cat, or a dog, or a child. When you were a baby I suppose you loved your mother. Talk about love, then, till the world is sick of the word. But don't you talk about Christianity. Don't you dare say one word, white or black, about it. Christianity is, as far as you are concerned, a horrible mystery. Keep clear of it, keep silent upon it, as you would upon an abomination. It is a thing that has made men slay and torture each other; and you will never know why. It is a thing that has made men do evil so that good may come; and you will never understand the evil, let alone the good. Christianity is a thing that could only make you vomit, till you are other than you are. I would not justify it to you even if I could. Hate it, in God's name, as Turnbull does, who is a man. It is a monstrous thing, for which men die. And if you stand here and talk about love for another ten minutes it is very possible that you will see a man die for it."

I am not advocating that people should kill for religion, (neither was Chesterton) merely that people be willing to die for it. Nor am I claiming that people no longer have faith, that people arenot willing to be martyred. I am, however, advocating that people actually believe.

The domination of the lingua franca

The is something in a country's language that resonates with the character and ethos of its people. There is something in the sound, the cadence how many synonyms a language has for a word that is indicative of how that people see the world. As Henry Hitchings says in The Secret Life of Words: How English became English:

Every language has a character. Our relationship with our own language can be complacent, but when we speak a foreign tongue we sense more keenly the "characterfulness" of that language, the peculiar way it channels history and culture, its special version of the world, its distinctive textures and codes. Different languages seem suited to different areas of experience. Tradition has it that Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, preferred to speak French to diplomats, Italian to ladies, German to stable boys, and Spanish to God. English he seems to have used sparingly--to talk to geese. Nicholas Ostler, in his Macro-history Empires of the World, sketches 'some of the distinctive traits of the various traditions: Arabic's austere grandeur and egalitarianism; Chinese and Egyptian's unshakable self regard; Sanskrit's luxuriating classifications and hierarchies; Greek's self-confident innovation leading to self-obsession and pedantry; Latin's civic sense; Spanish rigidity, cupidity, and fidelity; French admiration for rationality; and English admiration for business acumen.' This type of generalization is attractive, albeit limiting, and hints at a deeper truth: that our languages hint at the nature of our world, and the history of their development is a history of consciousness.

The Economist published a study this past week about endangered languages. According to their study 34.5% are in some degree of danger of extinction while another 3.7% having gone extinct since 1950. At this point, with the process of globalization so entrenched in modern society and the majority of the Internet and media outlets in English, I am not sure what can be done. Yet the world will be a poorer place without the haunting vowels of Welsh or the sharp consonants of Yiddish and history, character, idiosyncrasies, and peoples the invoke.

English Marks a Million

A thought for the end of your week: The Economist, in its preview of 2009 issue, reports that the Global Language Monitor predicts that on April 29th 2009 English will officially pass the one million words mark.

In other news the average text message or IM conversation uses less than 50 of these.