#linguistic imperialism
In my “Anthropological Approaches to Linguistics” class, we were given some statements to “agree” or “disagree” with.
- “Chinese is more difficult to learn than other languages”
- “Texting is ruining english”
- “There are some languages without a grammar”
- “German is an ugly sounding language but good for describing technology”
- “If everyone in the world spoke English, things would be simpler and easier”
- “People who don’t know how to read and write don’t really know their language”
These are the ones I strongly disagreed with. I was shocked at how many people either agreed or weren’t sure about these statements, considering that everyone in that class will have already taken at least two semesters worth of anthropology or linguistics courses…
starsignfreak replied:
Why’d you disagree with the English being simpler statement? You might think it’s boring, but it wouldn’t be more difficult.
I disagree because it’s quite a colonialist way of thinking. I don’t think that life would be simpler or better if most of the world lost their languages and was forced to speak English.
thinking about how the burning of the library of alexandria is remembered as the most prominent historical symbol of the destruction of knowledge…but that’s nothing compared to the thousands of entire languages killed in America and Australia by the colonialists…
To put an extremely fine point on this excellent paragraph: language is knowledge in non-literate cultures. This is why language reclamation is always at the top of the list for where to spend our limited resources in Native America.
