Professor Marc van Oostendorp from Leiden University invests in the prospering future of at least the EU

[Geertjan Benus]

For more information in Dutch
This message is aiming an international community and therefore it has been written in English.

MOOC means Massive Open Online Course. I started with “Miracles of Languages, an introduction to Linguistics.” The classes are diverse and interactive.

I unilaterally met this brave professor from behind my screen. I followed some of the video registrations of his classes about linguistics. I know now in some extend what linguists do and I draw some conclusions. One of these is: the EU should be governed by linguists.

All members of the EU parliament should follow this free study on the inter­net and they will find out that the EU-member states have more in common than just a name (EU) and a curren­cy (the euro). These members shall find out that they all easily can feed the EU with their acknowledge­ment of diversity and commonness in a natural way.

My explanation
With this professor and his initiative, the EU will become a place of understanding its own complexity and the EU-government will understand the place the EU has to claim in the world.

Using a language is the mere human. Humans are bound to search their roots. And humans are bound to look for adventure. So the spirit in the EU should be an interaction between these characteristics. The EU has languages in common, even more than 28. So this makes another reason why linguists should govern the EU. Or at least governed by politicians, understanding the linguistical approach of mankind on the aspect of communication.

Governing the EU is a matter of communication
The following characteristics languages have (1) discrete infinity, (2) displacements and (3) joint attention. This is all what the EU-parliament needs, to be able to govern.

After this course, we understand how difficult communication is and how much efforts we need to make ourselves being understood. But it is humanlike to make these efforts. I learned as well that linguists work in diverse places. So not only to work in Brussels, but also in places like the library, the “bush”, the closet, the laboratory and in the street. We can find these places all over the EU. That is a huge advantage.

Conclusion
I recommend this course to all of us, not only to the members of the EU-parliament. Shakespeare’s Hamlet said: “to be or not to be, that is the question”. Someday some EU-governor will say: to communicate or not, that is the question, shall we hide in fear or shall we thrive for understanding, shall we prove our humanity and show how we distinct us humans from deer and let us rise in compassion in order to prosper all in differences…