@Duchess64
A case can be made for Spanish due to its dominance in Latin America. However, I am in favour of a reduction in the dominance of European languages in colonised countries. South Africa has a good balance: we have many different languages and we speak them at home, and we use English as a lingua franca. Spanish and English are too dominant in the Americas - it is actually rare for people to speak indigenous languages. It can be a lingua franca that adds connection to other parts of the world as well, but a balance must be restored.
The post that was quoted here has been removedIt was, of course, an overreaction of the kind designed to be provocative on an internet forum, and not really a serious (retrospective) prescription for foreign policy.
Nevertheless, I think targeting Saudi Arabia as a response to twenty-first-century jihadism would have made more logical sense than targeting Saddam Hussein's Iraq (i.e., some sense rather than none).
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The post that was quoted here has been removedBRICS has 41% of the world's population. It has the roughly most powerful country in every continent (with the possible exception of South Africa - second behind Egypt) except North America as a member. It accounts for a slice of GDP similar to that of the USA and EU. Yet it has overwhelmingly more growth potential. It is obvious that the balance of power is shifting away from Europe, and rapidly. This is accelerated by the fact that the UK is peeling off - the first casualty of trying to force friendly neighbours to live in the same house under a dysfunctional ruleset.
BRICS is the future. I've always thought that America could gracefully retire from sole hegemony if she makes the right choices in her alliances. But that would involve patching things up with China etc.
I believe that China will become a democracy when its people no longer see the need for the CCP to protect them from a hostile world. Far from the racist stereotypes of being robotic and subservient, there is a quiet, uniquely Chinese undercurrent of rebellion brewing.
@ashiitaka saidThis is a curious, and unexplained statement. Can you clarify what you mean by it?
If it makes any difference, I don't believe the reaction comes from a western perspective.
I ought to clarify that I do not consider myself to be a westerner in outlook.
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@ashiitaka saidA fact about the BRICS countries, however, is they don't have anything very obvious in common, except for presently being "emerging economies" ( even that's disputable; Russia is surely more of a "declining economy" ).
I'm South African.
I studied Japanese as a hobby. Unfortunately, my teacher passed away last year. It is "ugly American" to assume that anyone who could show more than superficial interest in various Asian countries (China, Japan, India, Iran, etc), which have long and rich histories equal (or in the possible case of China alone, exceeding) that of Western Europe and N ...[text shortened]... l, especially given Europe's less-than-stellar record. They can learn to share power and be friends.
Moreover, these five countries belong to several different continents and have dramatically different cultural and religious norms as well as rather different political and economic organisations. If anything, Russia really belongs with Europe on civilisational grounds (i.e., it's part of the historic Western civilisation that, in cultural terms, stretches from the Algarve to Vladivostok)! On a less grand scale, many Brexiteers argued on the basis of a kind of cultural logic - i.e., that Britain belongs with the Anglosphere rather than with continental Europe.
BRICS, by contrast, is an almost entirely artificial grouping based solely on its members being, or believing themselves to be, at a particular stage of economic development. China and India are already geopolitical antagonists. Whatever the future of these countries on an individual level, I find it hard to believe anyone will be talking about them as a unit in a few years' time!
@ashiitaka saidLatin America is a basket case. There's no reason for Spanish to expand to be honest as much as I hate to say it.
@Duchess64
A case can be made for Spanish due to its dominance in Latin America. However, I am in favour of a reduction in the dominance of European languages in colonised countries. South Africa has a good balance: we have many different languages and we speak them at home, and we use English as a lingua franca. Spanish and English are too dominant in the Americas - it ...[text shortened]... gua franca that adds connection to other parts of the world as well, but a balance must be restored.
@athousandyoung saidLatin America is broadly speaking more developed than the colonies of the other European languages that D64 mentioned (French, German), and Spanish has more speakers than both combined.
Latin America is a basket case. There's no reason for Spanish to expand to be honest as much as I hate to say it.
Trust me, I am no fan of Spanish imperialism in the Americas, but I can see the case for its global importance ahead of other European languages (other than English).
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@ashiitaka said"A balance must be restored" - this isn't really something that can be done by fiat, though, is it? Indigenous languages are still very widely spoken in South Africa because the period of colonisation was relatively short. The period of Spanish colonisation in Latin America was much longer and the dominance of Spanish reflects that. (Note, however, that the picture is not uniform; in Bolivia nearly half of all citizens speak an indigenous language in addition to Spanish, and the constitution declares all indigenous languages official).
A case can be made for Spanish due to its dominance in Latin America. However, I am in favour of a reduction in the dominance of European languages in colonised countries. South Africa has a good balance: we have many different languages and we speak them at home, and we use English as a lingua franca. Spanish and English are too dominant in the Americas - it is actually ra ...[text shortened]... gua franca that adds connection to other parts of the world as well, but a balance must be restored.
But in principle I don't believe there are obvious strategies for "restoring balance", since the question of whether indigenous languages survive and thrive is a complicated and unpredictable one. Consider for instance that Welsh is doing pretty well, even though Wales is part of the overwhelmingly English-speaking UK and even though language equality in Wales is a relatively recent development; while, by contrast, Irish is inexorably dwindling despite being the historic tongue of an independent nation state from which, since independence, it has received constitutional priority, a mandatory place in the school curriculum, and generous financial support.
@teinosuke saidIt hasn't always worked. But the Jewish people have successfully revived Hebrew from almost scratch.
"A balance must be restored" - this isn't really something that can be done by fiat, though, is it? Indigenous languages are still very widely spoken in South Africa because the period of colonisation was relatively short. The period of Spanish colonisation in Latin America was much longer and the dominance of Spanish reflects that. (Note, however, that the picture is not u ...[text shortened]... constitutional priority, a mandatory place in the school curriculum, and generous financial support.
Bolivia (Quechua, Aymara, etc), Yucatán (Maya), Oaxaca (Zapotec, Mixtec) are just some examples of high concentrations.
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@ashiitaka saidThat's true - though under very specific and unprecedented circumstances.
It hasn't always worked. But the Jewish people have successfully revived Hebrew from almost scratch.
Actually, though, there are other examples. For instance, in nineteenth-century Finland, most educated people spoke Swedish; as a national consciousness emerged, a deliberate process of Fennicisation by which Finnish patriots adopted the indigenous languages, converted Swedish surnames to Finnish, etc. Similar things happened elsewhere in Europe. In the 1920s, it mightn't have seemed absurd to assume that the future of Ireland would be Irish-speaking.
