I was thinking about the idea of genetic mixing the other day. When people of different genetic backgrounds have offspring the chances are that the offspring will be better off than it's parents. This is best exemplified by inherited diseases such as Tay-Sachs disease (Often found in those of Slavic, Jewish, or Eastern-European descent. or Sickle-Cell anemia (often found in those of African descent. In both situations the child is only born with the disease if both parents are carriers. So the chances of someone being born with Sickle-Cell or Tay-Sachs is extremely low if one parent is African and the other is an Ashkenazi Jew.
Now what if we were to apply this same thinking to language, something that's almost has hereditary as genes themselves. By mixing languages we can form a new, more complete language. The example that I used in class is of the coup d'etat, where we didn't have a phrase in English that quite fit in it's place. But there are dozens of other examples, and even more times when we could adopt this strategy.
For instance the word Malquerer is Spanish, it means something to the effect of loving/hating something. There is no word in English to fit this. So what if we adopt it to improve the language. Could we move forward to a single language that combines the best parts of all language to create the most complete linguistic experience?
Of course this would not be a substitute for all languages. The poetry of French, and the forcefulness of German could be lost in this new "Standard" language. A truly tragic loss for humanity. So I'm not advocating getting rid of any language. But creating a standard language to avoid communication problems. Languages like Spanglish and Yiddish before it are combining two languages in an attempt at better communication. It is irrelevant what language that "Standard" is based on.
Is it morally right to advocate for a standard language? Or would be considered too ethnocentric?
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
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i responded to your post :)
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