A language for all - Una lingua per tutti

Thorsten Pattberg: Knowledge is a Polyglot (Big Think, 2013)

A language for all - Una lingua per tutti

By Mario Schiani

Given that there are so many languages, living and dead languages, official languages and unofficial ones, and, of course, a plethora of dialects, it can be said that the world is not lacking communication codes. In fact, there are too many languages which often caused poor mutual understanding in our otherwise rich European history. Sometimes, language itself constitutes an obstacle, rather than the means to work around communication problems. Someone – in our case a German linguist with the improbable name of Thorsten Pattberg – proposes, or perhaps provides us with, a “global language” through which humanity can finally harmonize its differences... [READ MORE]

Posto che esistono lingue vive e lingue morte, lingue ufficiali e lingue ufficiose oltre, naturalmente, a una pletora di dialetti, si può affermare che, al mondo, i codici di comunicazione non mancano. Ce ne sono anche troppi, se vogliamo, e le lingue, anche nella nostra Europa così ricca di Storia e povera di reciproca comprensione, a volte costituiscono l’ostacolo e non il mezzo con cui aggirarlo.  Qualcuno - nel nostro caso un linguista tedesco dall’improbabile nome di Thorsten Pattberg - propone, o forse prevede, una “lingua globale” grazie alla quale l’umanità possa finalmente armonizzare le sue differenze... [READ MORE]

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On Global Language, End of Translation, and Non-Western Concepts

"The problem with that is, I think, that China is underrepresented in World history because Chinese terminologies are largely erased or omitted. A ‘China report’ in Western media without a single Chinese term is literally “Chinese-free”. And that’s a scandal." --Pattberg
[Interview with Danish Radio24syv ] [READ FULL TRANSCRIPT]

DEUTUNGSHOHEIT

Deutungshoheit is a German word meaning "having the sovereignty over the definition of thought," sometimes also called "the prerogative of final explanation." The German philosophers Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel, for example, could easily promote 'The End of All Things' or 'The End of History' simply because they had written the history of all the world's people in German language, thus felt they owned world history. Seeing it this way, European dominance over the history of thought is a language trick. See two articles in Asia Times: Lost in translation I and Lost in translation II. [BACK TO MAIN]