Thread by @mariliacout

1/ Yesterday I asked a question about how many languages were natively spoken in one's country and how many languages one speaks. I had several interesting replies. My reasons to start this conversation are the following:

2)
- to understand and separate the phenomena of "lingua franca" from the resentful willfully ignorant American white nationalist response to reject other languages in USA territory
- to explore multi-linguism in contemporary times.

3) The need for a common language or dialect to accomplish some task that requires communication has always existed. There are several linguistic types for these common codes.

4) Among the elites of different countries, though, one language will be adopted as the "lingua franca", or the common language in which diplomacy, science and other negotiations will take place.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_fr…

5) English has been the lingua franca for some time. Things are changing and those of us who must dig into the scientific literature find articles we'd love to read with no translation to English, for example.

6) Being English, American or Australian and not speaking any other language is not shameful at all. There is no pressure to communicate in any other language. Except for England, where we just pretend there isn't (but there is), there is no other language competing for...

7) ... official status. In the USA and Australia, native populations have been decimated or reduced to a powerless condition. Those that exert cultural resistance barely manage to keep teaching their children the tribal language so that it doesn't go extinct as most others.

8) Given the artificial nature of the modern State - a line designed by the dominant classes in military conflict that becomes "the nation" after proper indoctrination through nationalism - many countries have several official languages.
worldatlas.com/articles/most-…

8) Social multi-linguism, whether acknowledged (and the country adopts more than one official language) or not, is the rule rather than the exception. Strictly speaking, almost all countries are multilingual.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_m…

9) The USA pretend they are not because they practiced genocide (the violent disruption of another culture's social fabric) against the indigenous population and because they fail to acknowledge that about 20% of its population is a native speaker of Spanish.

10) Not that different from the rest of the Americas, the Europeans managed to push the majority of indigenous languages into extinction in the USA. The number of existent languages varies by survey around 150.
babbel.com/en/magazine/na…

11) We, immigrants whose native language is not English usually speak at least 2 languages (rare) and usually much more. In the region of Oaxaca, Mexico, 16 languages are currently spoken:
whatoaxaca.com/oaxaca-languag…

12) They speak these languages on the streets, markets and will only shift to Spanish to speak to you if they want.

13) The Central American refugees being illegally terrorized and murdered by Trump's administration are far more sophisticated, culturally than their monoglot assailants.
native-languages.org/most-central.h…

14) These are just the 10 most important languages. There are many, many more. There are several Mayan languages. Central American was the most densely populated area of the "New World" when the Europeans invaded the continent in the XVIth century.

15) The willfully ignorant white Americans who are, well, ignorant, refuse to learn anything, including languages, and want to punish others who publicly speak other languages, the majority of Americans don't speak other languages because they weren't given the opportunity.

16) That is also reflected on politicians. While presidents from times when being educated was considered relevant were fluent in more than one language, observe how this changes in recent times:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_m…

17) Trump has stubbornly stuck to the white trash stereotype (proving that you don't have to be poor to be white trash): in spite of being exposed to several languages throughout his life, he refused to learn any language.

18) That includes English, in which his grammatical, spelling and style mistakes are the reason for international laughter. However, they are also reinforcers of the "redneck hero" stereotype. Believe it or not, his ignorance strengthens his support among his base.

19) Being multi-lingual is *normal*. We're not *arrogant intellectual libruls* for being multi-lingual: we're just a product of modernity.

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