Language and discovery – The March to a Monoculture
My favorite FT columnist Harry Eyres writes in the Weekend Edition (subscription required) about the tragic lack of diversity in the modern world. The march to a monoculture extends from crops (all maize all the time) to literature (all Harry Potter all the time) to language (all English or Mandarin all the time).
Language loss is a topic addressed anthropologist Wade Davis at the wonderful TED Conference. His 2003 talk on endangered cultures argues language isn’t just a collection of vocabulary and grammatical rules. In fact, “Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind.” The languages of the planet are being lost at the rate of 6 a week – 50% of the world’s 6,000 languages, he says, have disappeared in our lifetime and “are no longer being whispered into the ears of children.”
This lack of diversity removes different ways of making sense out of the world, forever. Whole networks of living relationships disappear. Those of us left inhabiting the vast monocultures of English, Spanish, Mandarin and French must work harder to capture different ways of seeing. Different cultures create different realities. Different realities of lead to different discoveries.
A monoculture sows and sees the same thing, everywhere.
Eyres concludes by quoting the Emperor Charles V, who on seeing the cathedral his architect had constructed in the middle of the great mosque of Córdoba, stated “You have destroyed what was unique to replace it with what could be found anywhere.”
So what differentiates your discoveries?
2 Comments so far
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Some of those cultures should at least treasure their language by using it. They can always learn other languages and even practice it without removing their own.
By Barb on 06.05.07 6:00 pm
“the tragic lack of diversity in the modern world” I love so much this topic, I really agree with Harry Eyres. I can give an example about France, there is a lot of governmental institutions which protect the French language. eg: You can’t print out a restaurant’s menu in English if you don’t translate it entirely in French.
By Laurent Farci on 07.03.07 2:03 pm
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