A Language Unknown

Quitlahpalohua, iknihutli.

I wish I hadn't had to Google that before I wrote it. It's Náhuatl for "greetings, friends", and used to be the native language everywhere from Southeast Mexico to El Salvador:

As you can see, only very few actively-speaking Náhuatl population clusters remain.

After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire (based in Tenochtitan, Mexico), in 1521, Náhuatl began to disappear slowly as the lingua franca of Mesoamerica. Driven by Catholicism, Spanish began to infiltrate the population, thus becoming the predominant language in the region.

Regretfully, there can only be one lingua franca occupying a space at a time, and Spanish replaced Náhuatl as such. Instead of preserving both languages as official, or evidence of a culture as great as the Spanish, the Conquistadors decided to throw the linguistic patrimony of Mesoamerica down the drain.

Basically.

Of course, the tossing of languages has been a particular problem for the human race since the beginning of language: as long as there has been war, there have been disappearing races and tribes, and languages. Take the Inuit Genocide, or (even more recently) the Native American mass displacements from their ancestral territories. All of these slow wars of attrition slowly erode the world's cultural heritage; a slow tirade against diversity.

I've always been obsessed with words in other languages that have no direct translation to either Spanish or English (the two that I speak most fluently). One of these is "mamihlapinatapai", which has been denominated "the most succinct word" by the Guinness Book of World Records. It's also considered one of the hardest words to translate, with it meaning something along the lines of "a look that two people share when each one wishes the other one would initiate something, but none of them doing so".

Thanks, Bettafish Resistance, for Mamihlapinatapai

Isn't it wonderful? In this day and age, etymology is not considered to be an important study to pursue. The origin and change of meaning in language hasn't been given the attention it deserves- especially now, that the UNESCO estimates that one language dies every 14 days. In similar lines, over half of the world's 7,000 different languages is expected to disappear by the end of the century.

To be honest, I see the appeal in learning English, or Spanish or Chinese. They're either the majority language in trade (business, economics, mathematics), or knowing one of the predominant languages just makes it easier to communicate with the rest of the world. From an economic perspective, it makes sense.

However, what is the cost? Is a slowly disappearing culture a good price to pay for a one-up in business? This queries come from a place in me in which I'm scared of globalization. I'll admit it; I, as a millennial, am scared of globalization. No, it's not an oxymoron. It's the fact that I don't want cultural heritage to be whitewashed or influenced by the lack of culture that comes with globalization.

Perhaps I'll have to adapt (of course I will), and perhaps the UNESCO will come up with effective languge-protection programs. For now, however, I'll have to be resigned to learning Náhuatl merely as a pastime-- merely to hold a dying ember of my culture.