"What did medieval linguist Antonio de Nebrija mean when he told Queen Isabella that: “language is the perfect instrument of empire?” How has language contributed to colonial power? Focus on a specific example."
I agree with Antonio de Nebrija that language is a crucial factor of spreading an empire into other countries, as well as maintaining one and keeping it strong. How is language strong enough to do something decisive and severe as this? I believe that language is capable of eliminating the language and the culture of the country they are taking over and the people living there. This happens by them bringing in their cultures, beliefs, and especially the language, and they teach them to the country that they are colonizing. This all depends on the country being colonized as well if their strong enough to to keep their language and use it and maintain their cultures no matter who is trying to change their cultures and language. For example languages such as (French, English, Spanish, and Italian) these are the languages specifically looked at as they were colonizing countries back then and they have found their ways into spreading their languages and cultures into specific countries such as (Libya, Tunis, Algeria.) while other countries who were colonized by many countries however they knew how to maintain their language and culture by using them and sticking to their beliefs countries such as; (Egypt) Egypt was a country who maintained their country by using their language, and this is what I talked about before about a language can spread an empire or maintaining it. Egypt was a country that knew how to maintain their country against both The British and The French Empires and weren't affected by the language.
Furthermore I believe that there are many countries that were affected by empires spreading their languages and cultures, and that can be seen and known to this day by their language and the accents that they have and a mixture of two languages. And empires that lose power and aren't able to maintain their languages can disappear and fall without the ability of rising back again, a good example to this would be, (The Roman Empire).
