L'amoureux des langues est epris d'alterite Celle des cultures h travers celle des langues

Abstract

 Semantics has come to feature as a very major field of linguistic research. Modern linguists are attempting to "understand" why, although the "syntactic structures" of various languages are quite different, at least ostensibly, all the languages of the world belong to one great community of Universal Thinking. Since men came together, they' have undertaken translations of all sorts, and their messages have circulated from culture to culture. Linguists are, accordingly, now bringing their research-light to bear on the study of "language universals". The comparative study of languages and of their diversity there-fore no longer holds sway. Diverse socio-political factors explain why a few languages of the world (French, English, Spanish, Arabic) are exercising a linguistic hegemony over the mass of the other languages. This contemporary phenomenon represents a menace for humanity because it will inevitably lead to the extinction of many minority languages and the irreversible impoverishment of Universal Thinking. It has consequently become essential, if not imperative, in the Humanitlei as well as in the Sciences, to encourage thinking and research in the various vernacular languages of today, and, as it were, to salvage them from extinction through a systematic work of transcription .