The language

[MaximMK]

Something i keep hearing recently and really annoys me is "Preserve our language!". This topic keeps coming up and the government here (right-wing nationalist) made a campaign about it on TV. The main point is that a language is what makes a nation distinguished from other nations. It is a national treasure it must be preserved by all means. It is what makes us be us. I consider all cultures one big human culture or way of life. Cultures mix, change, adapt and new cultures are created, some disappear, new appear etc. People change ways all the time and make new ways together. Eventually with communication like the internet we are all getting similar all build up common views etc. So i usually say like isnt it better to use just one language everywhere. English is popular its a common thing everyone knows it isn't it simpler just to use it everywhere. It doesn't have to be English its just an example. I was promoting the idea of everyone using a same language. I often got the response like: What and give up of our language our national treasure the thing which makes us different from anyone else? And im like why do you want to be different so much? Why do you want to keep the stuff that make us different instead of building one community where we are all similar and live together in peace. I mean its more practical to use one language in the world why would you want to complicate things only to preserve your national diversity by all means. What is your opinion on this? Are the language and preserving national diversity so important or is it just a means of communication that can adapt and eventually become one universal system of communication for all?

I have no trouble using any language that is easier and more practical i see it as just a means of communication that can change not some national treasure to be protected.

[cynicles]

I have no problem with the development of a universal so long as it isn't forced. Any universal language outside of force will be a gradual integration, some mix. I would still like some record of lost or dying language though.

[MaximMK]

Ofcourse its part of history and whoever wants can learn old languages for history research etc. Its just i feel like its very nationalistic to claim to your own language at all costs just because it is used by people of your nationality and deny using one universal language.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Esperanton estas sanga facila al lerni!

But yeah, 'preserving our language' is some thinly-veiled nationalist bullshit - as soon as people confuse culture with country, you begin to see some of the most fucked up and reactionary ideas develop. Nativism doesn't have anything on the pogroms and ultra-nationalism in Sovannaphum.

Secondary Lingua Franca is the way to go.

[ВАЛТЕР]

We've had some morons spouting that shit here too. They fail to realize that language is something that changes over time. I mean, Serbian has a whole bunch of words in Turkish, German, and whatnot. Just like every other language has words borrowed from other languages. To suggest that we have to "preserve our language" is ridiculous. Language changes over time.

[Philosophos]

Well the language itself can't start these nationalist bullshit. People are using language as a motive to start wars etc etc. I don't see anything bad from perserving a language because its one is a different way of thinking. I don't like the idea of all people speaking of just one language (especially english). It will make the world so poor in cultural stuff.... What I believe the best is that every person should learn a non-natural language such as Esperanto. It's easy, noone speaks it from birth (with a few exceptions) and at the same time you can speak you own language if you want.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

People preserving their noble language and culture:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/oct/31/burma-muslims-buddhists-clashes-video

[ВАЛТЕР]

Language simply changes over time. Ancient Greek isn't spoken any more, neither is the old-Slavic language, or many, many other languages. They simply die out, either due to occupations, changes in borders, or movement of entire populations from one region to another.

[Soomie]

I don't see how english makes a country what it is when about four different countries (Britain, the US, Australia, Canada) have it listed as their national language.

As far as having a universal language, I don't see how that idea could develop and be put into practice. I happen to like learning different languages, and I think that a language has its peoples' culture behind it. I don't see how the world would decide WHICH language should be the universal language. I think the best thing to do would be to develop a universal language that is spoken by everyone, and allow the other languages to be spoken by their people on a personal level. All across the world, the universal language would be the default language on signs and what not, and then the language of the particular country that you're located in could be beneath it. It's already like that with english and spanish in places.

[maskerade]

I think this issue is more complicated than just 'thinly veiled nationalism'. just imagine if it was your mother tongue that was going extinct and you had to learn a language completely different from it?

not talking about europeans here, rather the hundreds of thousands of stateless peoples who are being drawn into overcrowded slums because of economic globalization.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

I think this issue is more complicated than just 'thinly veiled nationalism'. just imagine if it was your mother tongue that was going extinct and you had to learn a language completely different from it?

not talking about europeans here, rather the hundreds of thousands of stateless peoples who are being drawn into overcrowded slums because of economic globalization.

Of course, keeping a language and culture alive is a much needed objective. Thousands of dialects are just disappearing because parents feel that they should only teach their children the country's official language to fit in with society. To be honest, I've never understood the left's phobia of universal languages. Like Comrade VMK said, learning a language like Esperanto could be completed by the end of primary school and would work wonders on lingual conservation.

I might've phrased what I said wrong, but what I meant was that when these 'language values' get in the way of people's lives and blame race or ethnic groups for their destruction, then it gets Hitler-esque. Just take a damn look at Indochina (god I hate that name). After staying over there for a week, I'd seen first hand the seething racism that flows throughout that region. And it's all Ultra-Nationalism: "We have to protect our Thai culture so that the uncivilised muslim jihads don't destroy our lands!" "Those bastard Laotians are ruining our proud nation! We have to stop their mutilation of our language and the spread of dirty Isan!"

[Crimson Commissar]

A global lingua-franca is definitely a great step towards internationalism and the integration of the human race, but I don't like the idea of that language being English.

English has only manoeuvred it's way to become the world's most common language due to the nature of US imperialism and globalisation. Unfortunately what we have now is a lot of linguistic and cultural barriers being eroded, in Europe, in Asia, in the third world, etc. Because for a lot of the world, the vision of the "American life" or the "Anglo life" is one to look up to. They speak English, listen to English music, view English media all in order to make themselves fit into this ideal.

The problem is that this shouldn't be the motivation for people adopting a world language. It should be something that comes naturally out of the unification of humanity and the abolishment of national borders.

[MaximMK]

They are even *****ing about us writing in Latin letters on the net. *****ing about us talking English all the time on net becauset we were abandoning our beautiful national language and shit like that. Now most recently they are *****ing about foreign series being emitted in our country. We were destroying our culture and religion with watching them. They are from another country and people in them have different religion so they are bad. People here are so conservative... Fucking nationalists everywhere telling me how to write and what to watch.

[hetz]

The USSR went to great lengths to preserve and support the development of the respective languages of all its peoples.
Languages are cultural riches, which is why people want to preserve them.

[hatzel]

They are even *****ing about us writing in Latin letters on the net. *****ing about us talking English all the time on net becauset we were abandoning our beautiful national language and shit like that. Now most recently they are *****ing about foreign series being emitted in our country.

On the subject of language: here's some not worth preserving...

[citizen of industry]

Humans are the same. Language communicates the same observations, feelings, thoughts, etc. whatever the tongue. No one is better or more effective than another, and any of them can serve as lingua franca. English has been lingua franca since the end of WWI, it will probably stop being lingua franca within this century, and it doesn't matter. Any one language is as good as the next and can communicate the same thoughts just as easily and fluently. It doesn't communicate culture, IMO. You can use different language to communicate the same culture, or a different one. Look at Marxism, there doesn't seem to be any problems in translation, whatever continent you may be on.

[Anarchocommunaltoad]

According to the something something worlf hypothesis, language affects thought patterns. So just pick a lefty one and beat your kids until they are fluent in it.

[Qumielhan]

Preservation of a language isn't necessary a right-wing idea. Back in USSR, for example, Belarusian language actually flourished for the first 20 years after the Great October, while in tsarist Russia it was considered a backward dialect of Russian and local nationalists suffered persecutions. Many siberian native languages obtained scripts, books, even their own writers (like chukchi writer Yuri Rytkheu).
A better way of dealing with nationalist rant about languages is depriving them of the "right" to "protect local identity". To conquer their ideological field by exposing how bourgeoisie elite (be they world-wide anglophone corporate suits or some local compradores) impose their language and culture on others, and that the only sure methode of securing a local endangered language is to tear it from the world capitalist economy. When local workers become the power, language prestige will automatically redirect itself to their language or dialect, and it will need artificial protection no more.

[Rafiq]

We didn't advance our complex linguistic systems which are unseen in virtually almost all other animals by directly "preserving them". We radically changed them over the course of time in accordance with different conditions.

[helot]

In a way you could argue that language already does preserve itself while changing. Like how a living being's genes also preserve its genetic history languages preserve their origins.

Anyway, anyone seeking to preserve a language as is is doomed to failure. There's no feasible way to stop the emergeance of dialects and their eventual separation except through destroying all language itself which again isnt' feasible.

[MaximMK]

There was this time in English class we learnt about a language that is almost dead only around 1000 people speak it today. And the message was like preserve this language etc. It was a language in some part of Asia that only women were taught to speak the language has no letter and is taught as tradition mother to daughter. I see the language purely as a means of communication and if you have a language that is more practical to learn and its commonly used allowing you to communicate with a lot of people why bother with some ancient language that only a few old women speak and has no written form. That language is not practical has no letters, limited only to woman, is very old so it probably does not have terms for modern stuff like technology etc. so its getting swapped with this new language which everybody speaks has letters and is modern ... its a natural process. It is pointless to use an old inefficient means of communication when you have a better one just because of some national/cultural feelings. Its like sending a pigeon with a letter to someone in Australia and not using a phone. ( It is considered you live on some other continent in the example) But still there are people including my teacher that think this language is worth preserving and should be taught.

[Luís Henrique]

According to the something something worlf hypothesis, language affects thought patterns. So just pick a lefty one and beat your kids until they are fluent in it.

Sapir-Whorf. But it is widely discredited.

Luís Henrique

[Jimmie Higgins]

Something i keep hearing recently and really annoys me is "Preserve our language!". This topic keeps coming up and the government here (right-wing nationalist) made a campaign about it on TV. The main point is that a language is what makes a nation distinguished from other nations. It is a national treasure it must be preserved by all means. It is what makes us be us. I consider all cultures one big human culture or way of life. Cultures mix, change, adapt and new cultures are created, some disappear, new appear etc. People change ways all the time and make new ways together. Eventually with communication like the internet we are all getting similar all build up common views etc. So i usually say like isnt it better to use just one language everywhere. English is popular its a common thing everyone knows it isn't it simpler just to use it everywhere. It doesn't have to be English its just an example. I was promoting the idea of everyone using a same language. I often got the response like: What and give up of our language our national treasure the thing which makes us different from anyone else? And im like why do you want to be different so much? Why do you want to keep the stuff that make us different instead of building one community where we are all similar and live together in peace. I mean its more practical to use one language in the world why would you want to complicate things only to preserve your national diversity by all means. What is your opinion on this? Are the language and preserving national diversity so important or is it just a means of communication that can adapt and eventually become one universal system of communication for all?

I have no trouble using any language that is easier and more practical i see it as just a means of communication that can change not some national treasure to be protected.

In many places the creation of an official (sometimes multiple official) language was part of creating bourgois nation-states. France is the best example of this I know where patois were systematically eliminated in order to make Parisian French the standard. It was probably the same with German and Itialian unification - though I have not read about this specifically. In the US one of the early conservative arguments for public education in the North of the US was to eliminate the various german and irish dialects and so on. Language was also used to try and assimilate indigenous people and break their community-bonds.

So after a revolution I definately think the best take on language is to allow it to develop organically and not create some official ministry (like Spanish and French have - and was probably at one time a way to promote the culutral "superiority" of the imperial centers). International translation, coordination, and cooperation would be important, so either by creating structures to facilitate this, or by creating a sort of "international" standard language for these purposes while not requireing it's use in everyday speech.

A bi-lingual inernational/local language arrangement might ultimately cause an organic shift to one language, and that wouldn't be problematic IMO. Trying to enforce one - unless this was the vast majority opinion - would probably just cause friction beteen various groups of workers. Not that it would cause "language-wars" because that would probably seem silly to people and there would be no real material gain from that - it would be much easier just to say "fuck you" (in the native language) and ignore the artifical mandate.