期刊名称：CAMBIO : Rivista sulle Trasformazioni Sociali
印刷版ISSN：2239-1118
出版年度：2017
卷号：7
期号：13
页码：149-165
出版社：Università degli Studi di Firenze
摘要：Your French! I believe we should discuss the problem of languages. I give it greatimportance. Here is my point of view, in French! I am extremely concerned by the factthat in the near future, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in ten years, no doubt in less thantwenty years from now, all western European culture languages will have disappeared.Italy is a clear example: Italians have welcome the increasing use of the English languageand, as a consequence, publications in Italian - which are substantial in number - arebeing read less and less. Despite the fact that Italian is easy to understand for Spanishand French speakers (therefore for great part of Europe), as of now, writing a book inItalian means you won’t be read; writing it in French means you will hardly be read andvery soon not at all, as for German: people have already stopped reading in German.The extraordinary phenomena that was European culture, i.e. a common multinationalculture, is absolutely unique in world history. It is something never attained before, noteven by Latin or Ancient Greek. What is European culture? It is a German telling anEnglishman his opinion on what a Frenchman said concerning an Italian. You see? Itis a tertulia, to put it in Spanish. And all of that will disappear, it’s unconceivable! Why?Because none of us will make the effort to learn. I’m not saying European languages,that isn’t very useful, but I would say at least a few elements, from 50 to 100 words thatare at the centre of these tertulias among Europeans. How can you speak of “nation” (touse the best-known example) without specifying immediately whether you are referringto the French or to the German concept of nation? This is no great hardship. I am notreferring to science but to social thought and philosophy: in the same way, for everyother word one could say “as in Hegel”, “as in Kant”, “as in Mommsen”, etc. It maynot be as important for lawyers, because lawyers have national codes of law (though we could launch a discussion here, too!) but why not teach university people (let’s call them that) the ideas behind words that are at the heart of debates? Given the present crisis, it is very difficult to be translated today, whereas before everyone used to be translated into English, Italian, Spanish, French, etc. Despite my advancing years, I feel like campaigning to encourage people to learn something of other languages, at least where notions and concepts are involved.
