Dear clients and co-workers!

Today, the success of English around the world seems almost all too natural for us. In the academic fields of natural sciences and economics, over 98 percent of the works published are now written in English, and in almost all international companies speaking English is mandatory. But there is more to the history of the English language than success. What happens to the national languages and our own ability to express ourselves? Minae Mizumura, a writer and literary scholar born in Tokyo in 1951, asked herself the question and answered in her book The Fall of Language in the Age of English. Although she appreciates the existence of a universal language and does not deny the dominance of English in the current globalized world, she stresses the value of national languages, for they preserve and create a type of knowledge that only they can have. If English is all that’s left, then this specific knowledge, one so important to humanity, is lost. This is worth thinking about – especially with the help of Minae Mizumura.

Yours,

Ester Ramos