Quote:
Originally Posted by french user
...What we can care about is the preservation of cultural identities, languages, etc... which are challenged with globalisation.
|
I agree. It doesn't take something anywhere near as powerful as 'globalisation' to erase cultural identities and languages, however.
As recently as the early 1960s, there were children who arrived at primary school (Aged 5) on the Island adjacent to the one on which I lived who couldn't speak English (and they were expected to speak English at school.) It must've made life difficult for the teachers, who (quite reasonably, perhaps) might've expected that their charges would've been able to understand the language in which they were going to be taught.
Today - less than 50 years later - people are concerned that the language is dying out.
I understand that one of the measures used to determine whether a language is dying out is: "How many children are born who will speak that language as their first tongue?"
Where I grew up, the last person born who spoke our language as his first tongue was [apparently] my grandmother's uncle. Uncle Albert was about 20 years younger than my great-grandfather.
My grandmother spoke the language fluently, but it wasn't her first language. - She was brought up speaking English as well.
I was a 'generation rollback'. My mother was very ill during my early years and I was reared by my grandparents. My grandmother spent a lot of time looking after her mother (who could speak English, but preferred not to) and because I spent a lot of time with my great-grandmother, I spoke her language (and as her daughter had done) learned English at the same time.)
The language is dead. There are (perhaps) 3 or 4 people who could carry on a conversation [of sorts] in the language but AFAIK, nobody is anywhere near fluent.
The loss of the language is a pity, but it gets worse.
In the 1960's (and perhaps for many years afterwards) There was a significant number of (mainly) English people who came to the Island on holiday, enjoyed their stay there and decided to buy a house there - because it was such a laid-back place with so little formality, so few rules, so little crime and nothing like the place they were trying to get away from.
Not a problem (particularly for the locals who found they could sell their houses at grossly inflated prices to the 'English Imports.')
Unfortunately the 'Imports' (who had come to the Island 'because it was so unspoiled') found that after they'd been there for 5 or 6 minutes, they obtained the 'right to vote' and the 'right to be elected to be a lawmaker'.
That shouldn't have been a problem. They had immigrated because they liked the place the way it was and it was 'so unspoiled'. If you're a lawmaker, perhaps you need to make some new laws?
Yeah, right! Let's change all the things which brought us here to make the place just like the place we left!
It was one of the first 'multi-culti' disasters! The island now had 2 discrete cultures.
1. The 'original' people (who had, in many cases, been driven into cheaper houses by their own greed and by the greed of their compatriots who had sold off the houses their children might've been expected to buy at ridiculous prices) and
2. The markedly alien immigrants who hadn't bothered to make even the slightest attempt to integrate with the existing culture.
Things got worse - not better - and nowadays, the two groups don't seem to be able to communicate with one another.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
