Dear Nelson, you aren´t wrong. I will extend your statement. What about all the nice regional dialects, which distinguish the local populations. Together they built a nation, a sel-esteem and feel like a special kind of people. So I tend to diminuish the importance of the national native language. There must be some other influences which keep the people together to build a nation.

The native language is the way of understanding each other in the community and everyone is proud of his native language

Native language is the means of identification in this world.This is give your a medium to preserve your own rich cultural heritage, traditional values and all the valuable knowledge for generation yet to born.

Native language is identical to the nation. Without at least a language discrimination, then what kind of nation is that?

Native language is one of the unique identifiers of a nation, it is a part of the culture of this nation! Native language determines the way people think, communicate, and express their opinions. In my opinion, native language is the key to deeply UNDERSTAND the culture of the nation, since no matter how well you translate, some meaning will still be lost.

What of nations like The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and notably India, the second most populous, all with two or more languages? Are the bonds between citizens any less firm than in monolingual nations? My travels indicate that they are just as firm. Correct me if I err.

Dear Nelson, you aren´t wrong. I will extend your statement. What about all the nice regional dialects, which distinguish the local populations. Together they built a nation, a sel-esteem and feel like a special kind of people. So I tend to diminuish the importance of the national native language. There must be some other influences which keep the people together to build a nation.

Dear Hanno, here on our northern border of the U.S. we have Canada with its bilingual English-French population. Separatist murmurings of some of the Quebecois do not seem to prevail, at least not to my knowledge. When traveling in Quebec, I find Canadian nationalism just as strong as in other parts of that beautiful nation.

Dear Nelson, you will find a lot of examples in Germany too. Go to Bavaria or to swabians country and tell them you are from northern Germany, you get irony and teasing. Look for sports, all these different people are together jumping for joy, if a german is gaining. So it´s really not the native language alone.

Dear Hanno,

Bavaria is my favorite part. I find it so hospitable there. Yes, I know you are right, because the same applies to Italy: many different dialects and only one nation to be cheered in sports.

If you allow, their is a very old episode, called "The tower of Babel". You all know the result. People need a communication tool not to produce nonsense and misunderstanding. But I´m not sure that you need for this item a native language and that you are then able to build a nation.

Thank you all

Language makes the history of any nation and the nation which forgets its history; good or bad, it always fall. Good history can be taken as a glorious identity and from bad one should learn.

Dear All,

I think it is too late if somebody needs explanation in this issue mainly if one takes into account age, experiences and profession of the participants.

@Sahifa, there is no nation without language. Moreover, it s a part of our culture and our identity. The role of native language teachers is enormous. National politics must take care about native language! Here is an article on research on maintaining and renewing American Indian languages!

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/Main.html

Dear Ljubomir, Indian nations are artificially inserted into the vast body of the United States. Such tiny nations rely for their economic subsistence on shoppers, tourists or gamblers from that bigger nation. So it diversifies the bigger nation to take into account the littler nations. But their experience of nationhood, lamentably, is very limited precisely by the bigger nation, which mercilessly swallowed them up first, then regurgitated them afterwards as a hypocritical afterthought. Every time I visit an Indian nation, apologetic sentiments overcome me. Forgive me.

When I was young (a century ago :) We learned in sociology classes at high school the following definition of "nation" : Same language, same history, same religion, same land, same blood, same race. etc... I think this definition might be still valid for some monocultural countries in the world. However, after immigrating to Canada, I also experienced that there could be other values which might create national bonds and feelings.(like Olympics :) My first impressions, Canada being "United Nations of Canada" is slowly vanishing and I am starting to understand, observe and feel a very different bond between people here. I guess, in countries with mainly monocultural nations the 'national feelings' might be based on 'common historic values, in immigration countries it is more 'common future' which brings people together.

Apparently, in most (or let's say some) parts of the world the unity what a common language generates is still so important that according to the latest news, Putin's explanation for involvement in Cremea has been justified with the following statement:

"Russia reserves the rights to defend its interests and the RUSSIAN SPEAKING people who live there (from CNN news)

Mohammed, you can support your native language by studying and analyzing its culture-- particularly its literature-- in languages spoken by vast majorities of the world reading public. If you hold an academic position, you can publish in university presses.

From my perspective, and it is what I ask my students to consider, is the role language plays in defining culture and identity. It is important to defining peoples as communities and by this I mean communities both within and outside of one's traditional worldviews. This said, it is hard to maintain language when colonizing discourse has shaped many types of interactions over time for a variety of reasons and this has required counter-narratives to unsettle such discourse and promoter revitalizing common threads of community cohesivenes. This often begins with one's language as it defines and prescribes cultural tradition.