Blog Post #13 - Speaking in Tongues Blog Post

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 is a are dominant for any person to communicating with others in our day-to-day life’s. As generations are added to families, that family’s native language will eventually be lost as it is not understand therefore making it hard to communicate which is the whole purpose of any language. Not only is the language being lost, but so is a culture. Language is important within a culture as language and culture are strongly linked together.

By eradicating other languages and forcing another language upon a country you are essentially mentally taking over an entire nation. Behind each language you can find a country/nation’s history. By eliminating an entire nation’s language, you are destroying that countries/nation’s history wiping out the nation and replacing it with the new nation.

From this strategy, the more financially/politically dominant countries can conquer people of different nations easily and effectively. A language is there to proves the existence of a group of people or a culture, and without their native language, this group wont exist and the culture will follow. Countries which have been invaded, are often forced to work with the forces, and speak the same language as the occupied forces which have they have used for years. It is a well-known technique. For example, South American countries were invaded by Spain and Portugal and they still speak Spanish and Portuguese up until today and now it is their national language, whereas the languages which were spoken by small tribes is non-existent now due to colonisation.