Diversity of The World

 
         Naturally it's all about variety when ones thinks of diversity in the shrinking world of globalisation. Even though the Internet has been playing a crucial role as a communication platform to bridge better understanding in a world rich with cultures that is practiced by different races for centuries; English is still the dominating language that hold an estimate of 36% of the world's online population. In fact learning and writing English is one of the few subject that is still useful when a person step out and into the real world. We can expect languages like Tamil and Mandarin to play a more prominent role when India and China start to become the world's major economy player in the coming years. I do agree up to certain extent that businesses dominating the worlds economy platform does shape and influence how we use languages in our daily lives. Some have already claim English language will be slowing down when the world economy is starting to be dominated by other countries. I don't fully agree with that, until these emerging countries are able to lead in medicine, science and technology for human progress as a whole; which is largely dominated by English language.

         Some have fear that the world is losing it's cultural pluralism, where all groups within a large community preserve their own unique identity. Although I don't consider language as the main representation of a culture, but I do also see the need to seriously preserve any minority language in a fast globalising world to maintain a healthy cultural diversity. A research was carried out during the 90s by David Crystal, a honorary Professor of Linguistics of the University of Wales; where he has indicated that an average of one language is falling into disuse every two weeks. If this trend is to continue, more than 90% of languages spoken in the world today will be extinct by 2100. This can be due to many factors such as the influence of one language speaking community become bilingual in another language, as the gradual increase of second language usage will then face off the original, or heritage language with no native speakers in the end -- thus known as language death. In this manner it is wise to promote linguistic rights to preserve the minority language, regardless of ethnicity or nationality, or the number of language speakers in a territory communicating in private, or public sphere from forced cultural assimilation and linguistic imperialism.

         The human race throughout history is very well known of their tribal attitude in destroying minority's culture, heritage and ideology that they come in touch with to gain power, and control. This need not be as direct as committing genocide that lead to death or bringing harm to living members of a group. It can be as subtle as reducing birthrates, interfering with education, or transmission of culture to future generations of a group, or erasing and reducing the group's existence, and practices from the historical record; by systematically forcing or influencing changes in the name of development or politics; where the prominence presence is then representing the dominant race -- such development and conditioning can be classify as ethnocide. What is really more hypocrite about this method is the governing force that preserve, or conserve the national heritage of a diverse cultural wealth for the nation is also a major contributing factor for the deterioration of cultural diversity.

         End of the day, it's all about respect, or how else would anyone within a community would know them self better. Forcing or influencing others to be someone else that they are not will only lead nowhere; ending up where they first begin their journey in this world; discovering the footprints back to their roots. History does seems to repeat itself with every progress, leaving it to how much we are willing to embrace, understand, and appreciate the beauty of a diverse world we live in today. Even though we have already lost much of them in the past, but are we prepare to loose more in the future.

Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stiffled. I want all the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi