What is fast food doing to the languages of the jungle?
Translated from Swedish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.
At a glance
Opinion
Named sources
Context piece
- A column by Mikael Parkvall examines the relationship between threatened linguistic diversity and biological diversity.
- Parkvall says he had planned to move away from the subject of language loss, but a discussion in Dagens Nyheter drew him back to it.
Linguistic diversity is often under threat in the same places where biological diversity is also endangered. But that overlap does not necessarily mean that language loss and species loss have the same cause.
That is the starting point for Mikael Parkvall’s column, titled “What is fast food doing to the languages of the jungle?” Parkvall writes that he had recently produced what he felt were too many pieces about language death and intended to leave the subject alone for a while.
A treatment of the issue in Dagens Nyheter changed that plan. Parkvall says the discussion made it difficult for him to stay away from the topic, even though he had wanted to use the opportunity to show the breadth of linguistics.
The piece is presented as a column, and any opinions expressed belong to the writer.
About this summary
Originally published by Svenska Dagbladet in Swedish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.
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