A language is essentially a tool that has two purposes. You can either use this tool to repair the various relations in the human world or use it to destroy the same.
The usage of this tool and the extent of its use ultimately varies from person to person. It depends on your intentions, motives, insecurities, ego, and understanding of human psychology.
Language wars are not unheard of. They have been taking place since time immemorial. It is sad but true that in some areas, they still exist. Blame the human conscience! If not in the exaggerated form like it used to, it does exist somewhere deep down in the heart of humanity even today. Right from the days of the French revolution, it has always been a matter of question.
These people coming from different backgrounds, families, and religions had only one question in their minds. Which language is going to be more predominant? Does the economically dominant class get to have their only say? And thus, a whole new chapter begins where the “word” “our” and “theirs” appear to be the only prominent and penetrating ones that the human mind supposedly seems to understand because everything else makes no sense and gets blurred away.
“Thus, England came into Normandy’s hand, and the Normans at that time could only speak their own language, and spoke French just as they did at home and taught their children in the same manner, so that people of rank in this country who came of their blood all stick to the same language for if a man knows no French people will think little of him.”
Oh! yes, my friend, the barrier of language is such1
Today, however, society is the new expression of modern thinking. However, during Barack Obama’s presidential victory Obama asks for the healing of linguistic, racial, and cultural differences. It is certainly a moment of pride for us. But still, practically speaking, will a common person suddenly stop feeling secluded in a foreign country having a different tongue?
Maybe universal emotions will bring people together. And yes, since we all are very well accustomed to the theory of the great Wordsworth, let us say that literature brings a new ray of hope. Literature is nothing but the spontaneous overflow of emotions.
How different your and my way of verbal utterance may be, our emotions or, more precisely, human emotions, will help us reach that new edge where all of us become one. The plethora of emotions that literature provides us with bridges the linguistic gap between us. For my friend! Emotions don’t have a language they don’t own. They exist in all of us. Universal that is.
Therefore, in the end, it’s the emotions and other feelings that unite us. Though the languages divide, what we try to convey unites us without a doubt.
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Last Updated on by Laveleena Sharma
