Re: CHAT: national identity

Irina Rempt wrote:

> On Fri, 14 May 1999, Tom Wier wrote:
>
> > This is somewhat of an aside, but I've noticed that several of y'all seem
> > to refer to yourselves as members of the European Union, rather than
> > constituent members of your own countries.
>
> Not me. That I sometimes call myself "European" only indicates which
> side of the Atlantic I come from and that I share a few features with
> other people on the same side of the Atlantic.
Well, I guess that's good to know.  We should all take care to preserve our
separate unique cultural and historical heritages, and I fear sometimes that
homogenizing attitudes like we've been discussing might lead to the decay of that.

> I don't think it's a general attitude; there's a small group of
> (mostly young, rich and well-educated) people who believe vehemently
> in "Europe", and there even used to be an "European political party"
> - I was accosted by one of its canvassers once who tried to convince
> me that it would be a good thing if all of Europe was to be made
> perfectly homogeneous in culture and language. In vain, of course.
That would be horrible!  There was an article in the New York Times
online just recently about the cultural loss that is ongoing in many parts
of the world due to the death of languages:

<http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/051699lost-languages.html>

Europe's lost enough languages already.  We don't need to lose any more.