Comments on: one global culture http://global-culture.org/one-global-culture/ Sustainable, Memorable, Livable Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:34:17 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Gary http://global-culture.org/one-global-culture/comment-page-1/#comment-119766 Gary Sun, 07 Jun 2009 12:24:32 +0000 http://global-culture.org/blog/?p=248#comment-119766 The question of whether a lingua franca should or should not supplant national, ethnic languages at some time in the future has been a perennial issue among speakers of Esperanto. That language, as readers may know, has long been promoted as an easy-to-learn and neutral world lingua franca – even though many of its users have now edged away from advocacy of this audacious political aim, the realization of which is presently difficult to envisage. Yet although the question of the likely and/or desirable effects of a world lingua franca has cropped up regularly and for a long time in this particular community, consensus has never been achieved. Fearing the consequences of even appearing to desire substitution of ethnic languages, a large number of Esperanto-speakers now insist on calling for their preservation, advancing some very corny (in my eyes) identitarian arguments in the process. That occurs despite the fact that many Esperanto-speakers have migrated from one country to another, and are frequently bilingual or multilingual in everyday life. It goes to show how people are quite able to hold ethnicistic beliefs that are at odds with their cosmopolitan practices. In a world of universally pervasive nationalism, it is hard for many people to move from an ethnic to a postethnic vantagepoint, even for people whose experiences should predestine them to embrace cosmopolitanism. I hasten to mention, however, that there is a cosmopolitan and radically antinationalist minority among Esperanto-speakers (called "anationalists"), to which I belong. The question of whether a lingua franca should or should not supplant national, ethnic languages at some time in the future has been a perennial issue among speakers of Esperanto. That language, as readers may know, has long been promoted as an easy-to-learn and neutral world lingua franca – even though many of its users have now edged away from advocacy of this audacious political aim, the realization of which is presently difficult to envisage. Yet although the question of the likely and/or desirable effects of a world lingua franca has cropped up regularly and for a long time in this particular community, consensus has never been achieved. Fearing the consequences of even appearing to desire substitution of ethnic languages, a large number of Esperanto-speakers now insist on calling for their preservation, advancing some very corny (in my eyes) identitarian arguments in the process. That occurs despite the fact that many Esperanto-speakers have migrated from one country to another, and are frequently bilingual or multilingual in everyday life. It goes to show how people are quite able to hold ethnicistic beliefs that are at odds with their cosmopolitan practices. In a world of universally pervasive nationalism, it is hard for many people to move from an ethnic to a postethnic vantagepoint, even for people whose experiences should predestine them to embrace cosmopolitanism.

I hasten to mention, however, that there is a cosmopolitan and radically antinationalist minority among Esperanto-speakers (called “anationalists”), to which I belong.

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