Linguistic unity

“Envisioning the future of Europe” involves “the enhancement and protection of national identities” of which “Europe was – and could still be – the synthesis”. This process can be attained with the “contribution of the idioms that promoted Europe’s development across the centuries”. It is the view of sociologist Sabino Acquaviva, author of an essay published on the current issue of the Italian bi-monthly cultural magazine of the Sacred Heart Catholic University in Milan “Vita e pensiero”. Excerpts follow.Europe, Latin and Christianity. “Discussions on Europe should not disregard its past”, states Acquaviva. “Indeed, our past laid the grounds of a future federal State with a population of over five hundred million, where peoples who were once sworn enemies now live side by side”. In this horizon however, a hot conflictive debate is taking placing place between those who support the enhancement of local dialects and the proponents of national States. “These conservative stands are both anachronistic”, the scholar remarked. “The ongoing debate addresses a theme that lacks concreteness and that is not in harmony with developing societies”, since “it doesn’t consider the past as the fountainhead of our future”. “In the past – he points out – Europe was based on cultural and – partly – political elements. Latin and Christianity enabled the Continent’s unification, especially before Islamic expansionism from Africa, and later, with the Ottoman Empire, from Turkey and the Balkans”. It was a continent “marked by a profusion of regional spoken languages, and Latin was the language for inter-European communication”. “Many of these languages, which were the expression and the result of prevailing regional idioms”, were wiped away when national States were born, along with the identity of the peoples that spoke them”. As a result, in France northern-French jargon became French, in Italy Tuscan dialect prevailed over other regional jargons and became Italian, while in Spain Castilian became Spanish”. A community of peoples. According to Acquaviva, “the ongoing debate on dialects mixes the essential with the particular” and “overshadows the main problem, relating to regional idioms”. Does the undisclosed “language identity which united, and which still partly unites European populations (at the time with Latin and today with English) still exist? Do five hundred million Europeans feel members of a community of peoples who share a common cultural foundation, live in the same continent, and view their Federal State as protecting regional languages and cultures? Which will also bring them to a ‘new life’?”. In analysing the “situation” of Europe the scholar highlights four main aspects: “European populations’ perception of belonging to a 500-million political, cultural and military realm is increasing”; while “national membership awareness is decreasing”. At the same time, “regional identity, encompassing regional culture and language, is intensifying”, thus “promoting the acknowledgement of being part of an extended European nation”. “In other words – he clarifies – Catalans’, Venetians’ or Provencals’ self-perception as members of a European nation is increasing”. Protecting national identities. “Looking at the future” means “looking at Europe whilst protecting national identities”, affirms the sociologist. “This claim, apparently true at local level and only apparently dated, indeed responds to the needs of envisioning the future of our continent”, whereby the “cultural, social, linguistic and political horizon” is changing “also thanks to wide-ranging motivations”. “Major economic, linguistic and cultural identities such as those of China and India are the result of opposition to national European States'”. And if Europe’s unification fails, he points out, “it is doomed to succumb”, since “none of our national states” can combat “the competition” of Countries “with over one billion inhabitants, marked by rapid economic and demographic expansion”. European unification, claims the sociologist, must encompass “the recovery of national identities, of which Europe was, and can return to be, the synthesis“. Accordingly, “a dramatic shift in development programs” is urgently needed, to the benefit of Europe’s “future advancement”. In “Renaissance Europe, Latin was the vehicular language. Thus, contemporary Europe” must “reappraise regional cultures” and accept “English as the common vehicular language”. For Acquaviva it is “our peoples – and not the national States -” who are tasked with promoting the building of Europe, so that it “may return to be a protagonist of global history”.