Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Non-English nations like Iran and China must take steps to reduce and eliminate the cultural infection that comes with the English language

ALSO SEE OID 226Z

I say this as someone who is fluent in English. When a majority of the youth of your nation knows English fluently, some terrible things start to happen:
  1. They start using the English language for daily conversations, leading to a gradual rot of their native language. This use is usually considered "prestigious", due to the historical colonial dominance of the world by the British.
  2. Many native words start to get replaced by English words, thus corrupting the native language.
  3. The youth's minds experience a "cultural invasion" from English movies, TV shows, etc. These audiovisual pieces of content introduce them to culturally, morally, religiously and socially harmful and corrupting concepts and practices that are widespread in countries such as US and UK.
  4. They start to read the propaganda that is the bulk of English-language news media - whether it be about how this media portrays certain countries of the world, or how it spins the world's events. This can negatively affect the thinking and ultimately the actions of a country's youth and its people.
All that being said, it is unfortunately true that English is widespread in global business and trade. It is therefore essential to carefully "balance" a country's needs for global commerce with maintaining a country's cultural heritage, traditions and overall national identity.

How can this be done? One good way can be by diversifying. Let's take the example of Iran. There are - fortunately - many countries in the world that play a key role in global trade and commerce [or are upcoming giants] and are still not fully infected by the virus that is English. South Korea, Japan, Germany, France, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Turkey, and South America [taken collectively] are some of the examples. Iran should cultivate speakers in the native languages of these non-English powerhouses using a fixed/forced quota system, whereby alongside Farsi/Persian language for all, some pupils are taught French, some are taught Russian, some Korean, some Turkish, some Spanish, some Arabic, and so on [as the second language]. This will ensure that no single non-Iranian language dominates within the Iranian people, and so the Iranian people will always communicate with each other in their native Persian. And yet Iran will have a good number of speakers in various other languages, and these folks will enable direct global trade as well as international diplomacy with powerful global nations without the need of English language. Diversification of citizens' second language can be a powerful tool by which nations can get the beneficial aspects of knowing other languages while preventing psychological corruption of their people's thinking.

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