The Tower of Babel... In Reverse

In the Bible in the book of Genesis, there is a story about the Tower of Babel. The Bible says that the whole Earth spoke one language. The people decided to build a city and a tower. The tower was supposed to be tall enough to reach into heaven. When God saw that they were building the tower, he saw that with one language they would be able to do anything they imagined. He didn’t like this so he confused all their languages and spread them all throughout the Earth. Therefore, the tower was called Babel.

Today it seems that somewhat of the opposite of this situation is happening. While there are many languages in the world today, English is becoming the dominant language. A book written by Rob Burton, Artists of the Floating World, says that "linguistic diversity is threatened by the advance of English: one world language is lost every two weeks when the last speaking member of that linguistic group dies. At this rate, 2,500 native tongues will disappear in the next 100 years (more than one quarter of currently existing languages)" (Pg. 127).

While I think this is sad from a cultural point of view, I think there are worse parts of a culture to lose. If a culture loses a language, the people can still tell their stories and their history in English. While the point was brought up in class that there are some words or expressions in some languages that just don’t translate into English, Burton says that English "has demonstrated a versatile capacity to adapt to new cultural contexts by adopting, where necessary, hybrid forms of expression" (Pg. 127). I think it would be worse to lose something like the food or the traditions. Even though language is a very important part of the culture, if it is lost, the same things can still be said in English.

I also think the growing importance of English will make world communication easier and more effective. With the technology that now allows us to contact anywhere in the world, it would be helpful for all of us to be able to communicate with each other in the same language. And while the growing importance of English will make communication easier, there is a doubling process which is helping to preserve these indigenous languages even when English is being learned and used. The National Science Foundation have already began a process to "document and preserve threatened languages. As many as 70 at-risk languages have already been digitally archived" (Pg 127).

So although I do think that languages should try to be preserved so as to not homogenize all cultures into one, I also think there are worse parts of a culture that could be lost. If a language is lost, people can still say the same words, they will just be said in English. The benefits of everyone speaking English would be great. Communication would be tremendously easier.