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.

Comments

  1. Meraki0721 January 2017 at 08:00

    Colonialism warrants the imbalance of scales in terms of power and diminishes culture by effectively shunning indigenous languages out of practice. But as more countries are engulfed into the mainstream due to a common language, communication and trade opportunities improve. By weighing the advantages and disadvantages, can it be concluded that colonialism was perhaps not as detrimental as it is made out to be in terms of language?

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  2. Azim Baruno28 January 2017 at 11:14

    You have given a great insight in the cause of colonialism and the impact towards small and less powerful languages which were present in the region for a long time. The power that they have are used to oppress the so called "minority" and "submissive" population which can also affect the use of the oppressed's language. You could have cited an example where this has been done and has caused some troubles to the local community and its language.

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