PROMOTION OF LANGUAGES AND CULTURES IN A GLOBAL VILLAGE

GLOBAL URBANIZATION

• Cities have always concentrated populations from Uruk (first city state – 3500BC), to Rome (1 million people in 1AD), to Tokyo (the world’s largest at 34.8 million)

• Starting with the Industrial Revolution in Britain (~1750AD) the world has increasingly found itself urbanized.

• The trend is changing cultures rapidly, especially with our current rates of international travel, immigration and emigration

• In 1850AD 98% of the world’s population was born, lived and died within 20 miles of the same location.

• The Seven Wonders of the World was a travel guide for all those rich/powerful/crazy enough to travel.

• Now more than half of the world lives in urban areas.

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Rank Country 2012 ScoreChange since 2011

1Hong Kong 7,81 0,062Singapore 6,31 -0,023Ireland 5,63 0,084Belgium 5,49 0,115Switzerland 5,30 0,046Netherlands 5,19 0,027Sweden 4,96 0,018Denmark 4,94 0,019Hungary 4,75 0,07

10United Kingdom 4,74 0,0311Germany 4,72 0,0312Slovakia 4,66 0,0913Finland 4,62 0,0314France 4,58 0,0415Canada 4,55 0,0016Israel 4,55 0,0117Taiwan 4,55 0,0218Czech Republic 4,53 0,0719Austria 4,51 0,0320Spain 4,45 0,00

DOMINANCE OF ENGLISH - STANDARDIZING THE WORLD ONE AIRPORT AT A TIME

LANGUAGE LAWS

• Even Mandarin has begun to change because of the power of the English language – used to be read right to left, bottom to top (now like English – which is the opposite)

• In Canada we have imbedded bilingualism into our Constitution (1982)

• In Quebec they passed Bill 101 to protect and promote the use of French (1977)

LINGUISTIC RIGHTS• Official Bilingualism

• Manitoba - got rid of it in favour of English to suppress Métis history (Louis Riel and the creation of Manitoba in 1870 as a Métis province)

• Quebec - Bill 101 and the language police

• Acadians (Maritimes) – kicked out and then came back speaking a mixture of French and English (only protected in New Brunswick)

• USA refused bilingualism based on the issues we have faced in Canada and their melting pot society (assimilation model)

CULTURAL REVITALIZATION• Bolivia

• Colonized by the Spanish in the 1500s

• Indigenous people (Quechua and Aymara) forced to mine silver and became lower class citizens

• Mestizos (children of mixed marriages/unions) became a middle class

• Spanish upper class

• Independent from Spain in 1825

• Continued with the class structure until recently

• Natural gas discovered recently which has lead to a now democratic (sometimes) government pushing to have the wealth shared and the Indigenous cultures promoted once more.

LINGUISTIC REVITALIZATION• Inuktitut was facing extinction (along with other Native

languages), however, when Nunavut was created in 1999 it was declared an official language and is now taught in schools.• Residential schools were used to “beat the Indian out of them” (along

with other Aboriginal groups in Canada and the Commonwealth)

• The pressure of English, as the working language of the fur traders (Rupert’s Land/HBC) and then government officials, meant that it was the language of money.

• There is actually a divide now between the Inuktitut illiterate parents and the literate children.

• French is in a minority position in most of Canada, except for Quebec (Bill 101) where French is the only official language, and New Brunswick where they are the only officially bilingual province.

• While the CRTC ensures cultural content, which has lead to a higher proportion of Canadian musicians (as a percentage of our population) at the top of the charts than any other nationality, CBC adapts to immigration.

• There are over one million First Nations/Aboriginal/Métis people living in Canada and so there are programs designed just for them – including their own television satellite (Anik A1) in 1972

• Immigration is now over 280 000 people per annum in Canada – most coming from Asia (China and India especially)

• As a result Mandarin is now the most spoken and written language in Vancouver after English and the CBC has a Punjabi (#3 language) version of Hockey Night in Canada

INTERDEPENDENCE AND INTERCONNECTEDNESS

• The connections that bind us together are now so powerful that it takes concerted efforts to resist them.

• As a result we have standardized almost everything in these interactions (time, calendars, measurements, language, etc. . . )

• The more money you have the more likely you are to be interconnected (travel, buying goods, consuming media, etc. . . )

EX: ABORIGINAL CULTURAL VALUES

• Page 32 and 33 in the Textbook – Read the article on the Lubicon Cree and answer the three questions under “Explorations”

• CHARTING CULTURE