One has to wonder if language will one day be homogenous, if we will all speak one poorly put together language instead of the hundred+ languages spoken across the world today. Perhaps I'm exaggerating my thoughts, but one has to wonder.
I remember sitting in my italian class, receiving a typical italian lesson, when the subject got to language. We read that there is a big movement in Italy to maintain the purity of the Italian language. They argued that for whatever reason, Italians were becoming lazy and blending their language with English, which is arguably the leading language in pop culture.
And then I saw exactly what the Italian's meant. I've started to read El Tiempo Latino, a local spanish paper, in order to brush up on my spanish. I was reading an article on immigration and the sentence went something like this:
Eso no es la cuestione que necesitamos preguntar.
"Cuestione?" Really? These are educated journalists writing and they used the word "cuestione"?? For those of you that don't know, they're trying to say "question" (see it? cuestione= question... I really hope you see that) but these educated journalists seem to have forgotten that question, in spanish, is "pregunta." I- with my mediocre spanish skills- know that. My mouth fail wide open and I realized that THIS is the problem with languages. I can't understand why people are taking english words and somehow making them fit into their language when direct translations for some of these words already exist.
Which brings me to my original cuestione- are distinct languages a thing of the past? I mean sure, there's little to no resemblence between english and say, russian, but who's to say that english won't slowly creep into russian dialects? Is it only a matter of time before we all speak one garbled language? I guess that is something that only time will answer.
In the meantime, get it right- the word is pregunta. Not cuestione.
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