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The Globalization of Language
In my sociology class we were asked to write about the positive and negative results of globalization and respond to each others thoughts about the subject. One person had a really good point about globalization and said that a unified world language would be a positive result and it really struck a cored with me. Here’s what I wrote in response:
“Wow, while it’s a very positive for everyone to speak a universal language for practical reasons I also thing it’s an absolute tragedy that so many languages dying due to globalization. Language is such a deep part of who we are. It expresses our biases in subtle ways, it lends the context to how we describe our world, it’s a source of beauty and art in the use of language in literature. It’s also rich with our history as a culture and it tells the history of where we have come from and how we have changed, split apart from other cultures and shaped our own unique identity. Without diversity of language we would never have been graced with the rich world J.R.R. Tolkien created around the languages he invented, nor would we have many of the great Oxford scholars on etymology. You brought up a fantastic point that I hadn’t thought of for this exercise but I see it as much more of a negative affect of globalization then a positive. I guess there’s a balance here but I cannot help feeling that there’s something lost and the Library of Alexandria is burning every day another language is lost to humanity forever.”
