| This is the standard refrain any time somebody calls for a unified language: "it's an integral part of our culture". I addressed this: > Everybody has their own local medicines, even traditional witch-doctor medicines, but at the same time everybody gets the exact same doxycycline and training on when to use it. Likewise whatever word we end up choosing for "fish" and "net": use whatever word you want in your village, but when you want the one that works in the rest of the world, we made sure you're already armed with it. Will this mean losing the diversity of cultures due to increased globalism? Yes. Now here comes my most unpopular opinion on HN: Good, let's lose some cultures. My culture isn't special. Human cultures aren't a scare resource and we make up new ones all the time. If the next generation, which enjoys the gift of a single unified baseline language, isn't interested in my culture anymore, that's fine. It might even be good news. When they need a culture like my culture again, they'll develop one, probably within years or months. Complex cultures pop into and out of existence on the internet every day, and they're no less complex and no less varied than the ones that involved worshipping tree spirits and eating each other's hearts for strength. Let dying cultures die. |
It's astonishing to what degree that comparison misses the mark. No, "complex" cultures don't pop into and out of existence on the internet every day -- "gaming" culture or "sports" culture or "woke twitter" culture are not cultures in the same sense that people living an an area and speaking a common language develop a culture over time. They're not the same thing, and though you might compare them via metaphor they're so different as to make that metaphor misleading.
Amusingly, I've seen this attitude in Esperanto circles. No, there's no "Esperanto" culture in the same sense that I'm culturally North American (for example).
> When they need a culture like my culture again, they'll develop one, probably within years or months.
Culture is not nearly as ephemeral as you're making it out. You can't just develop a culture out of nothing. My "culture" includes not just a common vocabulary but a shared history going back hundreds of years; it includes visual arts, literature, intertwined family histories, the dust bowl, jazz and rock and roll. You can't just find those popping into and out of existence on Discord or Facebook.