Professor calls language change Darwinistic

The world of language is violent and chaotic, a linguistics expert said Monday during a lecture.

John Edwards, a professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, criticized the idea that while globalization flattens the world, languages nicely align with others as the individuals who speak them mingle.

“The lion and calf may lie together, but the calf won’t get much sleep,” Edwards said.

He said the lion for most of the world is the English language. Globalization has created the need for a common language with which the beneficiaries of the flattened Earth may communicate, he said.

Every year, the number of English speakers in countries like India and Peru increases while the number of people who speak indigenous languages and dialects decreases.

He said in a Darwinistic sense, the bigger languages are killing the smaller languages.

In Peru, the most endangered language, Huanca Quechua, is dying as Spanish is being taught with earnest to each new generation, IU Education Professor Serafin Coronel-Molina said.

He said governments must promote bilingualism to preserve smaller dialects while expanding more globally relevant languages.

“The best way is to transmit from generation to generation,” Coronel-Molina said. “The schools can maintain bilingual education. People in the community need to be encouraged to keep their language alive.”

That lesson is valuable to education students, education graduate student Lorin Estes said.

“There’s something very unique in each language that’s valuable,” Estes said.

Edwards said although he agreed bilingualism is the most sensible way to ensure smaller languages survive, he knows governments are resistant to bilingual education because they’re interested in maintaining national identity.

He said U.S. politicians who are resisting the influx of the Spanish language and trying to establish English as the only official language is one example. He added that similar conflicts occur in Canada and elsewhere.

“I think the notion of immigrant languages militating against national identities is unfounded,” Edwards said.

He said compelling governments to foster bilingual education, and thereby linguistic diversity is a very difficult task.

“Why can’t we have our linguistic cake and eat it, too?” he asked.