Speaking of conquest and colonization…I’ve been thinking a lot while I’m in Europe about whether or not the Western Empires of the past few centuries were really that terrible.
America at least has seemed to adopt the attitude that yes, they were. Australia as well, as evidenced by their now celebrating “Oops! We’re sorry for trampling on your cultural heritage! day” And while I won’t dispute that slavery was horrendous, wars destroy lives, or that the dissemination of diseases killing 90% of the native American population was bad…I’m not sure that means conquest itself is inherently evil. All of history tells the tales of the rise and fall of empires, and the cultural influences they left in their wake (Granada, Spain and the quasi-pluralist Islamic, Jewish, and Christian influences represents but one). Many of the greatest empires ultimately built up the areas they conquered to new academic and artistic heights. Greece, for example, in its era brought philosophy, science, and sophistication to most of the Mediterranean. Without such influences, other cultures might not have discovered wheels, aqueducts, gunpowder, and printing presses.
We seem to more blithely dismiss the ills of past generations the further into history they fade. Rome, Byzantium, and the Abbasid Caliphate are enough removed from now that we can talk about their contributions with equanimity. But the British Empire? Not so much. I found last year in London that I knew more about the Empire than the majority of the native population -- the nation is still so embarassed by much of it (see "Oops Day" above), they don´t bother covering more than cursory details in the history curriculum.
Still…a world where no languages had died and all cultures had been preserved and assigned equal value would be a little bit odd, don’t you think? My religious studies professors, and many sociologists and anthropologists, talk with a sense of horror about all of the old tribal languages which have steadily been dying, as their isolated enclaves assimilate to the larger communities/nations/world around them. They talk as if preserving the speakers, the records, and the traditions of these languages is the most important work they can do. ... But is it?
As I look around me in Spain, all I see now is the amount of good which has been accomplished by language uniformity.
It’s amazing to me that all of these students from Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, etc. can come to Spain to study, and understand each other perfectly, with only a few relatively minor slang and accent differences, like between America and Britain. By sharing a common language, South America is able to develop economically, intellectually, and more rapidly develop international relations. Without the Spanish conquistadors, all of South America would be far more alienated, and far less developed, due to linguistic barriers.
The same is true of Africa. For as much as Europe royally messed up that continent…the fact remains that you can travel to the vast majority of the countries, and communicate quite effectively in either French or English.
My point here is not that Spanish, French, or English are inherently superior languages, but rather that common languages in general foster communication and development.
I suppose this thought is one that has been hashed out by academics and length (see The World is Flat, or Jihad vs. McWorld) and won’t reach a resolution anytime soon. Still, I find it fascinating to analyze the various costs and benefits of global relationships.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Carolyn,
A universally understood language is essential to economic development, education for the struggling nations, and the worldwide spread of the gospel.
In earliest times, from Adam to Noah, the earth was of "one tongue and one language." This does not need to mean that no daughter languages had developed. But it does mean that an original language spoken by Adam and Eve was used often enough to be familiar to every nation. A more recent example is Latin.
During the thousand years after the Lord returns, that original language will be reintroduced and taught worldwide. This will provide the benefits you have identified, without the costs of conquest and empire.
Again, this does not have to mean that people will give up their familiar, native languages. It does mean that people will be able to learn one language that will allow worldwide understanding. The current use of English as a worldwide language, rivaling Spanish and French, illustrates those benefits very well.
Since our dispensation includes every important aspect of all previous dispensations, the restoration of a worldwide language is not only required, but it also will come when it will make modern communications even better. Imagine the blending of telecommunications, the presence of the Lord, and the ability to talk to anyone on earth!
So, our current progress in linguistics and electronics is an important sign of the times. Universal verbal communication is coming.
Mom
P.S. You notice I refrained from giving any scripture references. Finding them is left as an exercise for the student.
It is vitally important to preserve dying languages. It is not, necessarily, important for large groups of people to -speak- them.
Language has an amazing amount of nuance. It influences thought, culture, causality, and a host of other seemingly-insignificant-yet-fascinating repercussions.
My amazing French teacher, Madame Selke, pointed out a few differences. First, the French hate using the passive voice. They don't say "My car was stolen;" they say "Someone stole my car!"
And, as a culture, the French are much more likely to -blame- something. Or someone. This isn't me being a stereotyping bigot; this was Madame Selke's observation, and she was a native. (My friend Katie claims that when she was in Paris last month, there was a huge march protesting Winter. That's right. They were mad at winter, so they staged a protest. See? They like to -blame- something.)
Some languages are more vague. In America, you can refer to "my cousin" without it being gender specific. In a romance language, you can't get away with that. It's either "cousin" (male) or "cousine" (female). This makes it harder to lie. Or obfuscate. Or be deliberately vague. Or pull off literary twists of surprise.
If there were a special language designed by Aspies, it would be very precise. And if your only options were to say, "I'm sorry, I will be busy entertaining my male second-cousin once-removed on my father's side," or to say, "I will be busy. I refuse to elaborate," (assuming you are unwilling to lie outrageously), it would hardly mollify a prospective boyfriend. As opposed to "Oh, I'd love to, but my cousin's in town and I promised my Mom I'd be a good host."
I did a linguistic exercise once where I had to interpolate translations based upon an incomplete gloss. (A "gloss" is where you get a transliteration instead of a translation. Example: "But not friend (male) my did" vs. "But my friend didn't do it!") Anyway, I spent over an hour scratching my head over a seeming inconsistency. Again, over the word(s) "cousin" There were two different terms for male cousin, and two different terms for female cousin, and I could not figure out what differentiated them.
The teacher explained, at the next lecture, that this African tribe (whose language I was trying to decode) differentiated between cousins on the male side vs. the female side. Apparently they had a prohibition against marrying a first cousin on your Dad's side, but not on your Mom's side. Which, supposedly is born out by the genetics of recessive traits. I may have dad/mom side of that backwards. But you get the idea.
There are a variety of Eskimo languages, but they all tend to be very polysynthetic. That means, essentially, that they instead of adding a whole bunch of words together to make a sentence, they string a whole series of morphemes together to make a word. And that "word" frequently can function as an independent sentence.
I'm trying to think if I can invent an example. Something like "un-heav-y-snow-fall-now" ("It's snowing lightly")
It is also said that the Eskimos also have eight or twenty or fifty different words for snow. Again, there are different languages, and "word" is difficult to define here since in a highly polysynthetic langauge, the difference between a "word" and a "sentence" is difficult to define. They have lots of morphemes which can modify the idea of snow to convey specific meanings. "Light snow," "Heavy snow," "Hard snow," "Snow falling right now," "Snow on the ground," "Crusted snow that's safe to walk on," "Powdery snow that will take a long time to wade through," and so forth. All those ideas can be conveyed in English, although not as compactly. There are probably northern languages who subdivide snow further in categories we don't think about, though. I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on whether certain Eskimos have different words for "sleet" and "snow" or if they just modify "snow" with "stinging".
The idea, of course, is that these subtleties of nuance are fascinating, and endless. Language means you can express new and novel ideas. Shakespeare invented hundreds of new words, and yet everyone immediately knew what he meant.
When the earth loses a language, it forever loses the unique ideas and perspectives and thought patterns of that language. It would be sad, indeed, if it never occurred to anyone to question authority because there was a single word for "authority" which carried, always, a positive connotation.
Madame Selke also said, "Language control is thought control. Period." She was referring to L'Academie Francaise's efforts to censor English words from the French language, but she also mentioned, eerily, "1984".
The French intelligentsia go to huge efforts to make ensure that Official Documents, or TV programs, or Authorized Dictionaries say "l'ordinateur" (numberer) instead of "le computeur" (an obvious import). So far they are managing to keep their fingers in the dikes' holes. But the sea is, nonetheless, spilling over the top. If the majority of the population start using words like "le t-shirt," what can they do? (Or, for that matter, if the majority of English speakers stop using the word "whom," what can middle-school English teachers do about it?) Popular linguistic sovereignty!
The general rule of thumb is that if a language encounters a new noun (thing or idea), and it already has a word which can easily be adapted, it will adapt. But if not, it will import. If a primitive tribe in the South American rainforest encounter a truck for the first time, they are more likely to borrow the Spanish word for "truck" than to invent their own, since said truck is so alien.
But not always. The French Linguistic Police are trying, in their own way, to invent French-sounding substitutes rather than let their pure language be diluted with obnoxious Anglicisms. But, according to Jon, the Laotians just started naming car parts after animal anatomy.
Wouldn't it be sad if we lived in a world where no one, ever, thought of calling a car's headlights "ears"?
A basic lesson from history is that people -will- find ways to communicate. If a bigger civilization conquers a smaller, the smaller tends to learn a new language. Remember my favorite quote: "Language is the dialect with the biggest army"?
If two different cultures try to establish trade, they are more likely to create a pidgin, or blended language. Swahili is an example of this.
Modern English began as a pidgin of Anglo-Saxon Old English and Norman French. Another example of culture: a more passive people might simply have shrugged and started speaking French. The Anglo-Saxons were dragged, kicking and screaming, into incorporating French vocabulary.
In "The World is Flat," Thomas Friedman said that globalization is like the sun: more good than bad, and inevitable. "It will happen whether you like it or not," he argued, "So you might as well begin adapting." The same might be said of a universal language.
In general, a "lingua franca" is beneficial. (Yes, that term, which means a commonly spoken language, derives from the time when French was the dominant language of diplomacy.) It facilitates communication and trade. But should we stop teaching college Latin classes just because nobody speaks it anymore?
Each language is amazing, rich, unique, and vibrant. I remember studying ASL and thinking, "It never occurred to me that you could organize a sentence this way! What a fascinating grammatical structure!" (In ASL, you make a picture and present the biggest ideas first. So, spatially you would show "room-table-chairs-sofa (in the corner)"
ASL doesn't have the verb "to be." It's implied. ASL also doesn't have a passive voice, because it is all action. Now, if you had never heard of ASL, would it even have occurred to you that it was -possible- to have a language without the verb "to be"?
(I really wonder how an ASL interpreter would handle Hamlet's soliloquy. "Live or die?")
It was a huge revelation when, in my first semester of German, I realized that in German (and, Mom explained, Latin and other languages), it doesn't matter what order you put words in, because you change the word endings instead of the word order to create cases.
Spoken Mandarin would have little value to a deaf person, since it relies upon tone. (Does this mean that the Deaf in China rarely bother trying to speak or lip read, the way many in the U.S. do? I can't imagine anything more frustrating than a Deaf individual trying to voice Mandarin.
Still, -written- Chinese could have enormous benefit for the Deaf. Mrs. Robarge says she knows someone who wants to create a written version of ASL. If he succeeds, he would probably have to study all the pictogram or pictograph written systems in the world. Even if every extant language on the planet used an alphabetic system for writing, don't you think this linguistics professor would be happy to find grammars on Egyptian hieroglyphics, or Babylonian cuneiform, or Chinese pictograms at the library?
This leads me back to the original premise: it may be impractical for smaller languages to survive. It may be relatively unimportant for smaller languages to survive. (Survival of the fittest.) But it is vitally important to preserve records.
A few decades ago, scientists embarked on a huge project to freeze samples of every plant variety they could find, to preserve genetic diversity. Nowadays they are trying to map the genomes of different plant species. We may never need a particular variety of barley again. But it's nice to have a sample around--just in case.
It's the same principle with languages.
--Gail
P.S. I also agree with Mom; it would be marvelous for everyone to be bilingual, speaking both Adamic and another language. Or two. Or three.
P.S.S. Also, having a written record of languages can help with historical research. If you can map where languages influenced each other, you can map where different groups of people overlapped.
P.S.S.S. Um, sorry about my super-long rant. It's not my fault! I studied linguistics in college! Something about your blog entry set me off! I couldn't help it!...
P.S.S.S.S. Someday I'll get around to writing my "Anti-imperialistic linguistic terrorism" novel. Wahahaha.
P.S.S.S.S.S. Esperanto is great for Romance-based languages. If you already speak French, Spanish, or, especially, Portugeuse, it would be marvelous. It would not be particularly helpful for native Africans, Arabs, Asians, Slavs, etc. A really good international language would rely on the International Phonetic Alphabet. And would only incorporate sounds common to 85% of all languages. Like /t/, for instance.
P.S.S.S.S.S.S. Alas, even the best artifical language is unlikely to take off. But I'd settle for reforming English spelling.
I mistope. (Mis-typed.) Misspoke. Whatever.
See? I can invent a new word and it has meaning!
Anyway, I omitted a closing parenthesis. I also meant to say that Laotians call the rear-view mirrors "ears".
Wow. I really appreciate all the comments. I have never studied languages before, but I find the analysis fascinating. I had completely different thoughts, though, when I read this entry. This is probably because I have been thinking recently about colonization and its influence on the world, particularly how discriminated groups have continually fought for equal footing and the relative successes they have had. I'm not quite as good with words as your family, but I hope my point gets across.
My conclusion is that, there are no grounds to continually hate the 'empires' of the world. The ones who went out and conquered. Bad things happened, I'll admit that, but the European nations (or other conquering nations) generally were the ones who spread technology, and so forth, which allowed for the progression of the international society. New ideas, new medicines, new economic opportunities all were realized with this progress.
Many of the societies, ethnicities, or cultures which were on the conquered end, paid a price for this progress. The United States and other nations have attempted to correct for these negatives in various ways (Native Americans and college tuition is one of the best examples). As you pointed out, though, there is still shame and hate on the parts of many parties for the negative aspects of history. This is, in my opinion, unfounded because any other nation, any other culture, would have been equally as oppressing as the ones who actually did it.
If the Chinese beat the Europeans to the American continents, would they have been any kinder to the Native Americans? Would the African nations not enslaved other races had they had the opportunity? I think studying history will tell us 'no.' Unfortunately all people everywhere are susceptible to the same cravings for power, the same ability to abuse, oppress, and otherwise enslave.
I don't think people should be ashamed of what their respective nations have done in the past. What happened, happened, and if it was bad, it should be learned from. My family has a motto, 'each generation helps the next.' If you apply that to a national scale, then history is the world's greatest learning lab for preventing abuses in the future. We can avoid all the pain, shame, and hard feelings toward each other if we will just apply the lessons learned in history and forgive the hard lessons learned. Idealistic? Probably. True? I think so.
Thanks for the blog! Let me know if you find flaws in my analysis.
Jamie,
I agree that the Chinese would probably have exploited Native Americans, too. It is possible that they wouldn't have been quite so brutal about it if they thought the Native Americans looked similar to them. (When European nations conquered other European states, the victor exploited resources and subjugated the local population. When European states conquered African regions, they exploited humans and took slaves.)
There was an interesting book by Orson Scott Card ("Pastwatch")about a group of time travelers who conclude that they won't try to change Columbus' discovery of America. Instead, they try to create a level playing field by spreading a virus worldwide to make everybody equally immune to smallpox, yellow fever, and so on. Their idea was that if epidemic mortality weren't an issue, then the civilization with the best technology would win. They also sent one traveler who convinced Columbus to see the natives as equally human, rather than a lesser subspecies. It was hoped this would prevent the worst of Spain's Conquistadorial ambitions.
It's true that we don't have time machines, so we can't change our ancestors' actions. (An African-American professor of mine once rolled his eyes and said, "I know, I know, none of YOUR ancestors owned slaves.") It is sad that it took "civilized" countries so long to acknowledge the dark side of occupation.
It is true that the U.S. tries to assist Native American tribes in various ways. (Giving them special casino licenses, for instance.) It is also true, however, that many Native Americans still malinger in abject poverty on reservations.
Recently some Native American activists staged a publicity stunt wherein they "seceded" from the United States because of their continued poor living conditions: http://www.republicoflakotah.com/.
My favorite part was when they announced their provisional government would begin issuing passports and was willing to work with the U.S. State Department to facilitate travel between the Lakota Republic and the U.S.
Although their movement seems not to have gone anywhere, they have a good point about the high illiteracy and suicide rates! Not that I favor massive welfare initiatives--I favor finding ways to help them break the cycle of addiction, illiteracy, and poverty and help themselves--but the point is that the U.S. government created these problems 150-odd years ago, and subsequent policies have not helped very much.
The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is nutty on many issues. But his conspiracy theory about the U.S. government deliberately trying to spread crack cocaine in the inner city to subjugate poor African Americans is not as nutty as most people think. (Incorrect, I believe, but not totally loony.) The British deliberately spread opium throughout China. Human traffickers keep "their" prostitutes addicted to drugs so the prostitutes won't run away. And evil, evil warlords deliberately addict seven-year-old boys to drugs and turn them into child soldiers.
Sorry, I digressed into a rant there.
I like your idea of starting where we are and trying to make the world a better place. I like to think that is happening in most civilized countries.
It is also true that some empires conveyed great benefits to the peoples they conquered. The Pax Romana was largely beneficial, and Roman citizenship could be earned by people who cooperated.
There's another cute book, "The Mouse That Roared," about a small, bankrupt country whose rulers conclude that the only solution to their fiscal problems is to declare war on the United States, get invaded, surrender unconditionally, and then request aid for reconstruction.
(This was, I should note, written several decades before we invaded Iraq. And it assumed the populace would cooperate with the nice American soldiers.)
There was a sappy Christian romance novel I read long ago about the wife of a Canadian Mountie in a very, very remote Native village. This woman's pregnant best friend says, "Why do I need a white doctor? Our people have been delivering babies for thousands of years without white doctors." And the heroine cringes and thinks, "Yes, and you also have a 50% mortality rate!"
So, overall, I agree with you! And I did it so concisely, too! :)
Post a Comment