The fears that some people have regarding the dilution of ‘culture’ aren’t peculiar to the US (although due to our size and socioeconomic footprint that’s all many residents of the states seem to hear or read about). All in all, the angst some people here feel about the growing influence of native Spanish speaking Americans is echoed by similar feelings in other countries. Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times writes (a few weeks ago) about a related sentiment felt by some native Frenchman who are fretting about what they perceive as a growing loss of native French culture (whatever that means). The crucial difference though isn’t really the loss of culture per se, but rather the increasing percentage of French citizens who also speak other languages and who are bringing their own cultural influences in music, art, food, dress to France. Over just a few generations, much of western Europe has itself become a huge melting pot and a naïve (or unread, uneducated) visitor may be surprised to see the numbers of native north African, middle Eastern, or Caribbean residents speaking fluent French while on the way to their mosque or local market. The most interesting comment in the article was the statement by Kimmelman is that “French isn’t declining. It’s thriving like never before” with some 200 million French speakers worldwide. However of that 200 million, only 65 million are native French with the rest from former French colonies or outposts. The most astute comment I read is from Abdou Diouf, the former president of Senegal who leads a francophone organization, International Organization of the Francophonie, who says, (I paraphrase) , that the greater the influence of globalization (particularily spread through the internet) “the more we find common cultural differences and values” – including diversity – and diversity is the real result of globalization.
This is very interesting. Spiegel reports that Germany is about to make its final payment on the bonds it issued to raise cash in order to pay war reparations to the Allies after the end of WW1. According to the magazine, Germany issued these bonds to raise cash for the reparations and once issued, repaid them per their regular installments (except during the 2nd World War and through 1953 while the country was rebuilding).