Poetry of the Nations - One World Flowing
We try to globalize-- Others do not.
They refuse
I understand why: it is painful to try to understand others with their constant
Gobbledy gook
French, or Spanish, German, or Chinese...
It is other worlds of confusion and difficultly-attained pleasure.
So, many of them understand us. They are compelled to learn our ways of speech.
We have this hybrid language named after the main kingdom of the British islands.
"Are you English?" asked a young Chilean in the 8th Region countryside where us North Americans seldom tred.
"No," I replied, "I speak English. I am a United States citizen." (translated from Spanish in 1991).
We Americans, are North Americans. We have come from the original 13 colonies,
Where Sir George renounced his military command in Annapolis in 1885, two years after rebuking the old Brits.
Our colonies came together, in English, and went on to add more and more.
We have Alaska and Hawai'i, plus the territories spanning the oceans.
We have tendrils spanning all parts; our Commander-in-Chief threatens to rename even the Strait
of Hormuz.
Ahem.
Those parts the languages are Arabic and Persian. Far from what we know in European-based tongues.
Europe wished to be one: almost. Never Russia, nor a few smaller outliers.
Oh, those Greeks. They foumded so much, to be lost in so many byways of our collective consciences.
But the vaunted journal The Economist pronounces Charlemagne, Carlos Magno, as the newest edition of what united Europe shall be.
It was the Holy Roman Empire, centuries after Rome in Italy ruled the known, or Western world.
Before the Byzantines.
And we always have had the Turks.
Waves of them crashing into Europe, after hordes of previous barbarians like Huns or Mongols...
Europe has maintained its identity, mixed yet together.
The Russians loved France, once upon a time. Perhaps it was Napolean, a native Corsican who himself may have resented the land of Gaul, who poisoned the nation of Slavs against a newly enlightened power.
They revolted, they overthrew the monarchy, but then became a worse despotic tyrant and demon.
Tolstoy recalls the tales, in his august tome, of which I finally finished reading during my own military adventures. Age 55, a lifetime later.
Oh, the irony.
My son now speaks Arabic, my other learning Brazilian Portuguese.
We take in languages and cultures.
Or we eschew them.
Some consider our Queen and King's English God's own chosen, ordained, and final tongue.
Without the Ebonics and the pidgin varieties.
English, English, English. American stock English.
Not Chinese, as insinuated in the brief television series Firefly.
Future humanity using Mandarin as part of our lingua franca of the future.
Koreans maintain their language, more or less universalized, as would be Japanese.
Not sure about Vietnamese and possible variants. Or Thai.
Languages, idioms, sounds and songs, all forces within nature.
Our collective nature, and natures.
To be seen and to be heard. To emit and to understand.
Capture.
We, after all, are primates and conquerers.
We are the greatest of the apes.
We use intersubjective currencies, thank you Yuval Harari, to stake out our money and power.
Of course, missiles and frigates and aircraft carriers also determine who powers over whom,
If China owns its bordering seas, or if the Phillipines and its neighbors might lay claim to those fishing and boating rights.
There is the Actic, where Chinese vessels will move twice as fast, and maybe the U.S. and Canada have learned to share fishing, despite all the tawdriness of the tariff wars.
Prices and prices.
So we speak the world language, while the majority still speaks theirs. Their own.
