Language is culture; it is a primary means of establishing
identity with others. When the Europeans colonized Africa, for instance, they brought
their French or English or Dutch culture with them and established this culture in the
colonies that they formed by importing their form of government, protocol, etc.
Immediately, the official language of the African colonies became the European tongue,
first, because it was the language of the conqueror, but also because the African
languages were not written languages.
Whenever Napoleon
Bonaparte conquered a country, the first actions that he enacted were the complete
control of the media in the form of the newspapers, and the establishment of French as
the official language. He mandated that French be taught in the schools; French
literature was also introduced into the colony.
The
poet-philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe stated that when one learns another
language, one acquires another soul. Certainly, the colonial powers sought to condition
and educate those they had conquered through the power of government and the thinking of
a new language.
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