Well, I think language is one of the roots of all evil that affects man kind in conjunction to culture. And I am not alone on this one. Francis Fukayama and Samuel P. Huntington have both writen best sellers on the subject. Called "The Clash Of Civilizations" Huntington argues that in the post cold war world conflicts will be mainly due to culture and religion which is an expansion on the theory posed by Fukayama on an earlier book. I want to take one step further and point the finger at language as well for a few simple reasons.
Language is unfortunately the only way human beings can communicate. We already have trouble communicating with people in our own culture or even with our loved ones. Its not hard to see that we would have even more trouble with cross cultural communication. In these instances language could easily generate a conflict due to misunderstanding.'
Most conflicts involve countries that speak different languages and therefoe belong to different cultures since both are so intertwined. But none of this should be a surprise at all.
The last reason is the treatment POW and combatants receive from their enemies. If they do not share a language atrocious acts and war crimes are more likely to happen. Because of a lack of clear communication it is easier to dehumanize captives and therefore easier to torture them.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clash_of_civilization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man
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