It is said that globalization has a huge impact on the world’s languages and that some of them are negative. The process allows cultures to mix and spread far beyond the borders, and even though we are witnessing this amazing thing, we have to think of how this affects the tongues that are not commonly spoken.
Here we are going to talk about the effect globalization has on most of the languages that are spoken all over the world, and how it affects tongues that are unique and that are only used in some small parts of the globe.
What is Globalization?
Even though there are a few definitions that explain this term, experts agree to disagree when it comes to the literal meaning of this word.
Globalization, in short, is a term used to explain how the borders between cultures are being erased by the influence of politics, economy, and linguistic.
What this means is that some things are being accepted as an official all over the globe, people tend to break the barriers so they have a better understanding and they can accept their differences. Even though this process is amazing when it comes to new businesses, collaborations and cooperation, we ask the question – how is that going to affect the world’s languages?
The impact it has on the less used languages
One thing we are all witnesses to is the constant migration of people from one place to another. Here we are talking about both in and out of country migrations. People from villages move to towns, and people from towns move to large cities. And everyone hopes to one day move to the capital or out of the country.
This affects the languages in a way that many dialects are being lost and words that were commonly used in the past are now forgotten. Newer generations don’t care about the history their native tongue has and they don’t want to use words that were commonly used a few decades ago.
With the fact that this is happening all over the world, experts noticed that some unique and even obscure speeches are being lost with time.
Even though some people are still trying to keep those tongues alive, we are not sure if this is going to be successful in the next few decades. Only a minority of people try to preserve their roots and more and more people are focusing on official tongues that are widely used all over the globe.
To help users learn new languages and to ease the process of communications, places like KL Translations offer their services to everyone who is interested in translating their documents from one language to another.
The impact on widely used languages
Nowadays there are a few languages that are used in many parts of the world. It is said that more than two billion people are using it and this number includes the people who are not just native speakers.
English is the official language in the UK, US, The Republic of Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. It is also widely spoken on all the continents and more and more teenagers are choosing to use English in communication than their native language.
The reason for this is not only the globalization but also the Hollywood influence. Most movies and shows we watch come from it, so younger children are more exposed to English than their native languages.
Even though this is a good thing, it can also be bad for this tongue. The good thing about it is that people from all over the world can understand each other without any issues, but the negative side is there are too many variations of the same speech.
Words are added and there are too many accents all over the world that affect the official tongue. As we can already see, new temporary words are added in the official Oxford dictionary and the flavor of the official language is changing by the minute.
Other languages that experience the same loss of uniformity include Spanish, German, Italian, and French.
Grammar
This is one of the more negative things when it comes to globalization. People from all around the world have access to the internet and they use it daily to talk to their friends and family.
No matter if we are talking about the widely used tongues like English, or if we are talking about the minority ones, most people don’t care about grammar and sentence structure. One thing experts noticed is that with abbreviations users forget how to use the proper spelling and the grammar suffers so that people can type faster.
Even though most smartphone keyboards allow people to see what the proper spelling is, not everyone uses that option. And when it comes to grammar, unless users use advanced tools, they will not be corrected when their sentence structure is incorrect.
This begs the questions, are the future generations going to be illiterate and what can we do to help them learn how to use the proper languages? We will have to do something to promote using proper sentences and for younger users to start practicing proper spelling and grammar.
Foreign Tongues
One of the biggest problems with globalization is that not only the unique languages are being forgotten, but native English speakers are not interested in learning a second speech. We already know that billions of people are bilingual, but only a small percentage of those are native English speakers.
Even though there are many benefits to learning a second tongue, including brain exercises and prevention of mental health issues that come with age, people that live in the US and UK seem to be rejecting this possibility.
Globalization is said to be the gift of the modern age. We are able to communicate with each other with ease, we are able to remotely work for companies located on the other side of the world and we can even find love in places we’ve never dreamed of.
However, the toll that this process is taking on some tongues may be too high. We need to try and preserve the not so common tongues and we need to make sure that future generations will remember their roots.
