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Images International

Archival Collection of Talks on Various Bahá'í Subjects

Language as Worldview: Particular and Universal Aspects

1988

Dr. Alvino Fantini is Linguist and the director of Bilingualism in a multicultural program at the School of International Training He speaks on the topic "Language in the worldview". Dr. Fantini spoke in English interspersed with Spanish. He described language as something we use to communicate and to excommunicate. Language mediates nearly everything we humans do. Language makes the anthropoid a humanoid. Through language we know what we can and cannot do and what we can and cannot know. People want to improve their culture. They must struggle with language to do so. The process proves both difficult and paradoxical. English is language of wide communication; a language spoken around the world. Knowing English is both a help and a liability. People around the world are struggling to learn English because of its advantages in business and education. There are somewhere between 3,000 and 6,000 languages and dialects the world. Most of them aren’t used for widespread communication. One of fundamental ways to hold a people together is to share one common language. Baha’u’llah has said “The earth is but one country mankind it is citizens”. These citizens need to communicate to solve the problems of society.