Comment by lazyasciiart
5 hours ago
> prominence on the global stage,
not...really a solid argument for how well they would combine, but clearly a major contributor to how how much you know about them.
And FYI those languages didn't disappear 400 years ago. They are spoken today. Guatemala alone recognizes 25 current spoken languages - Spanish and 24 languages that are completely unrelated to any European language.
> For what it's worth a lot of cultural differences are becoming increasingly (unfortunately) minor differences at best because of globalization and the Internet and other communication technologies.
Good news! Many of these languages are still spoken today because these people still live in societies without the internet and other communication technologies! They don't even speak Spanish, their national official language, because they don't know anyone who speaks Spanish.
You don't have to know history, but try knowing a little bit more about current politics and geography before the sweeping statements?
> not...really a solid argument for how well they would combine,
It makes it easier. As a hypothetical you can imagine a pre-EU European continent for example, empire, colonies, and more. It would be much more difficult to get those countries to form a bloc because of the number of interests and where they conflict across the globe.
Now take a set of countries that do not have broad geopolitical considerations or have fewer - those countries simply have less to argue about and less complex arrangements to worry about. No colony, no overseas empire, no war.
It seems intuitive to me it’s much easier to get those countries to agree to various political arrangements and then we can mix in other considerations.
> And FYI those languages didn't disappear 400 years ago. They are spoken today. Guatemala alone recognizes 25 current spoken languages - Spanish and 24 languages that are completely unrelated to any European language.
I didn’t say they were gone - the person I was replying to said they were destroyed by Spanish and Portuguese colonialism. Separately, yes those languages are spoken, isn’t there some 180 languages spoken in New York? But you would still characterize the United States as an English speaking country. Just like no matter how many languages were spoken in Brazil it’s still a Portuguese speaking country.
Please stop wasting time with random comments like this. Not only do I generally not care but they are bad practices per the site guidelines.