A long time ago, I found the idea to preserve your native tongue to be quite important. Then I discovered that this idea isn’t new, and that there was a German association for that very cause, roughly 100 years ago they had the same idea and wanted to preserve the German language.
Then I read their documents, which was - of course - written in the kind of German that was spoken and written 100 years ago. I could make out what they’re talking about, but the grammar was quite different, and many words were spelled differently.
And that made me realize that the language isn’t what should be preserved. It’s changing all the time anyway. As long as communication works out, and people are friendl and peaceful, all is fine. No need to be pedantic about which word to use - if you understand each other. And they understood everything they were against, so their fight was pretty much a fight against something that is no problem at all.
If you ask me, there is no “foreign influence”. We’re all humans, and we use language. We meet, we use words, we hear them, and we start to say them. I don’t see any problem there.
That is how evolution works. Stuff changes at various rates, and language can change really fast (even just one generation). With the internet we will see it change even faster. English does have quite the leg-up just because of how well the British were at conquest (not approving this to be good to be clear). With the US becoming “the” superpower over the past 80 years, it too has had a major impact on keeping it going. I would love to see more influence into modern language come from non-English sources though. The more we expand our shared language, the more we might start to better understand each other. I have always heard that even learning just one other language can change your way of thinking about how other people approach different things. Locking people into the “us vs them” headspace creates room for fear based on lies or just because they are different. Just like how people of older age groups tend to get defensive of younger people just changing things. Which leads to some of said older folks to harass or otherwise belittle the youth for just doing something different. Also with this being from “The Guardian”, I would imagine that shit isn’t really as much of an issue for most of the regular population.
A long time ago, I found the idea to preserve your native tongue to be quite important. Then I discovered that this idea isn’t new, and that there was a German association for that very cause, roughly 100 years ago they had the same idea and wanted to preserve the German language.
Then I read their documents, which was - of course - written in the kind of German that was spoken and written 100 years ago. I could make out what they’re talking about, but the grammar was quite different, and many words were spelled differently.
And that made me realize that the language isn’t what should be preserved. It’s changing all the time anyway. As long as communication works out, and people are friendl and peaceful, all is fine. No need to be pedantic about which word to use - if you understand each other. And they understood everything they were against, so their fight was pretty much a fight against something that is no problem at all.
imo, theres a big difference between acknowledging a language evolving by itself, and wanting to keep foreign influence out.
On a small scale foreign influence seems fine but the more that comes the weaker the language gets
If you ask me, there is no “foreign influence”. We’re all humans, and we use language. We meet, we use words, we hear them, and we start to say them. I don’t see any problem there.
What kind of problem are you seeing?
That is how evolution works. Stuff changes at various rates, and language can change really fast (even just one generation). With the internet we will see it change even faster. English does have quite the leg-up just because of how well the British were at conquest (not approving this to be good to be clear). With the US becoming “the” superpower over the past 80 years, it too has had a major impact on keeping it going. I would love to see more influence into modern language come from non-English sources though. The more we expand our shared language, the more we might start to better understand each other. I have always heard that even learning just one other language can change your way of thinking about how other people approach different things. Locking people into the “us vs them” headspace creates room for fear based on lies or just because they are different. Just like how people of older age groups tend to get defensive of younger people just changing things. Which leads to some of said older folks to harass or otherwise belittle the youth for just doing something different. Also with this being from “The Guardian”, I would imagine that shit isn’t really as much of an issue for most of the regular population.