Kash’s World

Just about everyone is championing a language. Unfortunately they are all happen to be different languages and that is causing a lot of problems. Must languages cause so much disunity and conflict or have we been approaching this issue from the wrong direction?

 

Maps courtesy of www.theodora.com/maps used with permission

 

Malaysia, by the way, happens to be a frontline state in the battle between languages. On one side we hear, “I will die to preserve the Malay language!” while yet another group proclaims, “Chinese schools must be allowed to remain because we must preserve our mother language!”

This language thing keeps haunting us. Although Malaysians are experiencing a particularly scary version of this ghost; it’s the same all over the world.

Creoles, Kurds, Irishmen, Frenchmen and a host of other people are fighting, very often literally, to push their languages forward. For all I know, there are probably Englishmen fighting to save their language too – I can’t see them all smiling when they hear our Manglish.

Language issues are causing serious problems all over the world and it is one of the issues that need to be resolved if we want to live in peace. Despite all kinds of efforts, proposed compromises and solutions, we are nowhere near disposing this problem.

Have emotions got in the way of dispassionate examination of the problem and subsequent resolution?

I am no anthropologist or scientist but it appears to me that languages developed because people needed to communicate. Someone got tired of waving his hand and opened his mouth. Since people were located pretty far apart those days, various languages developed.

I am no historian either but I am pretty certain that the same language was used in as big as area as people could move around in. maybe in the beginning, people grunted differently from caves to caves and then spoke different languages from city to city and then country to country. I am of course making this overly simple to make my point.

My point is that when people could travel further, languages too expanded their reach.

Back then there were no real language issues because everyone spoke the same language. Problems only arose when invaders turned up but that resolved over time.

So if you look at it dispassionately, we have no reason to cling on to any language. Heck, our ancestors probably changed theirs a few times over the years. People simply spoke the language necessary to communicate – whatever it was.

The problem with the present time is that things have moved so fast forward in so short a time that mankind has problems adapting. Believe it or not, the language problem is all about managing change.

And we are doing a pretty poor job if you ask me.

Within a generation or two (which is a very short period in history) we went from horses to jetplanes. Since we can all move around and the world has become one, it makes sense to speak one language, no?

Language was never meant to be a form of cultural heritage. It was created for communication. If we can accept that, then it simply remains for us to decide which language to use right now.

To me, the choice is pretty clear. I have always loved Bhangra music but to communicate with the rest of the world, I will settle for the language most widely used in science, diplomacy and international politics.

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