[ENGLISH] - Speaking in Tongues
What did medieval linguist Antonio de Nebrija mean when he told Queen Isabella that: “language is the perfect instrument of empire?” How has language contributed to colonial power? Focus on a specific example.
Language has taken a huge role into spreading an empire's wings to the corners of the world. When the colonists first step foot on foreign soil, there was quite some problems communicating with the natives. Despite trying to learn the natives' language, the colonists have instead marginalised the natives by labeling themselves as the dominant group.
As language is used to communicate to one another, the natives find it hard to try to adapt to the situation where the newcomers have tried to overtake their status as the prominent power by utilising their language with the natives. The natives have limited to no access of using their own language thus seeing the extinction of languages due to colonialism and also the so-called "globalisation". This means that the more people speaking that particular language, the more powerful a nation or a colony is (which can also give an influence to the global society).
One example of this is the Javanese language in Indonesia. As a native Indonesian speaker with Javanese descent, I feel that the prominence of the government in pushing of the education of the Indonesian language acts as a catalyst to rapidly decrease the amount of languages. The Javanese people of Indonesia represents the majority of Indonesia yet the Javanese Language is not the most spoken language of Indonesia (it is second most spoken). Since Indonesia's independence, the government have tried to commercialise the language so that the whole nation can speak in the same language. Though this has made it easier for people of different tribal groups, It has also created a new problem for the Indonesian youths in the future. There are less youths speaking their tribal language (Javanese for example) as the government forces them to learn Indonesian and several decent paying jobs require you to have at least the standard education. This progress in Indonesia's development has made less people to speak in their own language and interacting within their own cultural community thanks to the marginalisation of one's culture and society in terms of language use. This is one prime example of a "Language Empire" in action.
Language has taken a huge role into spreading an empire's wings to the corners of the world. When the colonists first step foot on foreign soil, there was quite some problems communicating with the natives. Despite trying to learn the natives' language, the colonists have instead marginalised the natives by labeling themselves as the dominant group.
As language is used to communicate to one another, the natives find it hard to try to adapt to the situation where the newcomers have tried to overtake their status as the prominent power by utilising their language with the natives. The natives have limited to no access of using their own language thus seeing the extinction of languages due to colonialism and also the so-called "globalisation". This means that the more people speaking that particular language, the more powerful a nation or a colony is (which can also give an influence to the global society).
One example of this is the Javanese language in Indonesia. As a native Indonesian speaker with Javanese descent, I feel that the prominence of the government in pushing of the education of the Indonesian language acts as a catalyst to rapidly decrease the amount of languages. The Javanese people of Indonesia represents the majority of Indonesia yet the Javanese Language is not the most spoken language of Indonesia (it is second most spoken). Since Indonesia's independence, the government have tried to commercialise the language so that the whole nation can speak in the same language. Though this has made it easier for people of different tribal groups, It has also created a new problem for the Indonesian youths in the future. There are less youths speaking their tribal language (Javanese for example) as the government forces them to learn Indonesian and several decent paying jobs require you to have at least the standard education. This progress in Indonesia's development has made less people to speak in their own language and interacting within their own cultural community thanks to the marginalisation of one's culture and society in terms of language use. This is one prime example of a "Language Empire" in action.
There were some very good points in this post. I agree with how you said how colonization and modern day "globalization" are the main reasons behind the extinction of languages. The more people speak that "dominant" language, the more powerful that nation becomes, therefore leading to colonizing countries preferred to force the spread of their language into new territories as a way of unification.
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