Linguistic genocide and vanishing people: another way to start a war.

 News:Linguistic genocide and vanishing people: another way to start a war.
On 27^th November of the last year a conference-debate: “Linguistic genocide and Vanishing peoples: another way to start a war” was held in Rome at Sala delle Colonne; it was organized by the Esperanto Radical Association, aiming at spreading such a subject in order to fight LINGUISTIC GENOCIDE AND VANISHING CULTURAL IDENTITIES. At the conference, headed by Giorgio Pagano, Secretary General of the Esperanto Radical Association, participated the ethnolinguist Maurizio Gnerre, the anthropologist Flavia Cuturi, the chancellor of the University for strangers in Perugia Stefania Giannini, the Secretary of the italian commission at UNESCO Vincenzo Pellegrini and the movie director Filippo Soldi. A basic concept emerged from the debate: everyone is entitled to speak its own language and use it in every moment, even at the level of international communication. At the moment, this is not so obvious because we know that only few in the world can communicate without problems. The current international system of communication reflects the negative features of human society as, for example, its masochism, its irrational conduct and its inertia. Our society has chosen English as a language of communication (a not so much democratic and liberal choice), one of the less appropriate languages at international level, a hard task even for mother tongue speakers.95% of people in the world accept without problem a condition of linguistic subalternity to the left 5% represented by anglophones. For English speakers it’s natural that everybody should learn and speak their language in order to activate the international communication.It seems absurd that 90% of the students of secondary schools all around the world spend so much time to learn English ignoring other cultures which could be approached through language courses. It’s more than absurd that, after this period of time, many are not able to communicate in that language.Our intention is to make public opinion and politicians aware of the international language problem, clearing to them the two concepts of linguistic democracy and cultural identity preservation.For us it’s important that people become more and more aware of their own cultural values before than their linguistic values; they must react to avoid that their values are damaged forever.The “leitmotiv” of the conference was the future killing of languages by the strongest one, English language, which is actually spoken in the most powerful countries in the world and that today aims to make other vanish ( just as for Latin in the Legion of Caesar!).The “battle” to stop linguistic genocide must continue together with interesting proposals and strong commitment in promoting Esperanto, the eco-language.