According to recent statistics, linguistic diversity is vanishing.

In other words, not as many new languages grow up as those ones which are dying and the existing languages are subjected to the reciprocal influence, becoming sorts of mixture. In the first place, all this is a consequence both of globalization and the Internet, that make it simple to go from a part of the world to another. Hence, people start to think that one day well all speak the same way. On the one hand, it would be a great advantage to be able to understand and speak with people from all over the world. That would not only benefit the trade but most of all it would let us all feel closer and, in the true sense of the word, citizens of the Earth. However, this linguistic uniformity could just be seen as a loss of a countrys identity for different reasons. In fact, a language is not a simple combination of vowels and consonants, but it expresses the characteristics of the people who live in a particular area. That is to say that a language is a population. Thats why when we translate, for example, from Italian into English we can never do it literally, since we must be careful about the different mentalities of two different countries. For instance, the formal speaking is expressed in Italian by the use of the 3rd person pronoun Lei, while in English there isnt any polite form pronoun. This doesnt mean that English people are impolite, on the contrary - in a more pragmatic way they denote formality through some small cunnings (e.g. conditional instead of imperative; Mr. .. Mrs. .. instead of the single names) and the formulation of the sentence. In conclusion, I think that although it is crucial to be open to different cultures in order to exchange ideas, we should preserve linguistic diversity, because without it we would be a boring indistinct mass, that has lost its traditions and originality. And if theres no comparison, theres no growth either. Probably in the future we will entirely lose linguistic diversity for real, but I think that it wouldnt last long and new languages would originate again.

Giulia Mangiapane - April 12 , 2012

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