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I once took a class in International RElations where the prof said that the “single most dramatic impact on the history of international relations” was the invention of the jet airliner.
I thought about that yesterday when Tonka asked me about which languages were spoken in Switzerland (she had a friend who just moved there.)
I explained: German, French, Italian, and Romansch.
Then she asked “why?”
I explained some of the history of the people who lived there.
As the conversation continued, it evolved to cover the languages and people who live there now….and we started to speculate on what this meant for the future of national identity.
It’s been noted before, but it’s really amazing to think about the massive leaps in technology that have occurred in the past 50 years…and the dramatic impact they have on the concept of the nation-state based on a set of people with a common language in a defined geographic area.
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