One of the things that fascinates me till now are borders. Within the South East Asian region, there are a couple of countries with almost entirely different languages - Thai, Filipino, Malay, Vietnamese, etc.
Over in Europe, there are even more languages with a lot of history to each of their own form of languages - The Scandinavians share some old Norse which is quite similar to Old German, which is in turn similar to Olde English. Then we have the Latin based languages like Italian, French, Spanish, Portugese, etc. Furthermore there are the a couple of languages in Eastern Europe that share similarities to some Russian.
What is really unique about all these different countries is how patriotic they can be at times. An example is that all these so called regions would love to benefit economically from each other creating free trade zones amongst neighbouring countries. However, like everything with human nature, nobody wants to lose out, so typically during the current banking crisis and economic environment, these independent governments cannot stop bickering to agree on ways to solve the problem.
Looking at it from a micro point of view, it's just like having house mates - when everyone is doing well, earning money and contributing to the leisure time of one another everyone is happy. However, if either one drops out from work for a couple of weeks, will any of the other house mates feel obliged to help out?
No comments:
Post a Comment