I'm currently learning Kiche, a Mayan language from Guatemala. My whole life I've lived in the Americas, but only hearing European languages: Portuguese in Brazil, French in Haiti, English in the USA, and Spanish almost everywhere else. For the first time in my life I'm in a place where most conversations happen in an actual American language and it's pretty incredible. But it also makes me a bit sad. What if America had kept it's linguistic and cultural diversity like Europe and Asia got to? Even Africa came out less homogeneously Europeanized.
But no sense in crying over what could've been. I'm grateful that at least a smidgen survives.
This is a massive cope. It is glaringly obvious that the world is losing languages at a higher rate than it is gaining them.
There is a very clear trend towards linguistic consolidation and mass-media, literacy, and the internet / instant communication have accelerated this trend. In my home country of Romania teens often talk to each other in English, even though they all speak Romanian natively. We're also seeing an immense amount of calques, competing with native expressions and often overpowering them. I would honestly not be surprised if in 50 years many national languages start to only be spoken in official circumstances.
I'm currently learning Kiche, a Mayan language from Guatemala. My whole life I've lived in the Americas, but only hearing European languages: Portuguese in Brazil, French in Haiti, English in the USA, and Spanish almost everywhere else. For the first time in my life I'm in a place where most conversations happen in an actual American language and it's pretty incredible. But it also makes me a bit sad. What if America had kept it's linguistic and cultural diversity like Europe and Asia got to? Even Africa came out less homogeneously Europeanized.
But no sense in crying over what could've been. I'm grateful that at least a smidgen survives.
This is a massive cope. It is glaringly obvious that the world is losing languages at a higher rate than it is gaining them.
There is a very clear trend towards linguistic consolidation and mass-media, literacy, and the internet / instant communication have accelerated this trend. In my home country of Romania teens often talk to each other in English, even though they all speak Romanian natively. We're also seeing an immense amount of calques, competing with native expressions and often overpowering them. I would honestly not be surprised if in 50 years many national languages start to only be spoken in official circumstances.
I understand the fear and the sadness, but I wonder if the English domination of global languages will die if the US empire dies.
> Since 1960, the world has lost hundreds of languages — and gained thousands.