THE CONTACT OF LANGUAGES
Authors: Sooriamoorthy Ramanujam 
Published: March 2019

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that languages in general adopt the monogenetic approach and evolve in a totally independent milieu, and that, however much one fosters the polygenetic approach, they still remain none the less identifable in the light of the characteristics which distinguish and almost isolate them for and as what they are or are supposed to be, whilst at the same time glaringly revealing the crossbreeding elements without which they would not even exist. And this lifelong contact, which exists since the very beginning, should there be any origin that were rigorously traceable and identifable as such, which probably exists even before any origin as such, between languages, this very real contact, although it may seem well-nigh inexistent, this contact which is all the more real as it is unconscious and seems to be perfectly passive, gives, provided we, be it even slightly, develop a conscious and active awareness of it–whence the crucial role of teachers, grammarians, linguists, philosophers and writers– rise both to prospects of hospitality and to risks of hostility, of rejection, due, inter alia, to a sense of fear which, albeit understandable, can only be justifed and explained by the presence or imminence of a cultural siege which it will be precisely up to the teachers, grammarians, linguists, philosophers and writers, though not only to them, to contain, if not to annihilate, so much so that any germ, however unavoidable it may be, of opposition and/or of conﬂict, may lead to the laying out of an area as much as to the inauguration of an era which will always, upon pain of transmogrifcation into idols, into ideologies, owe it to the atmosphere of renewal, once again the work of teachers, grammarians, linguists, philosophers and writers, but very soon, perhaps thanks to them, the work of one and all, therein prevailing, to keep existing in order that the only outcome resulting from conﬂict and cooperation, from conﬂictooperation, may be the mutual enrichment of everybody in a climate of conviviality, the prelude to a perpetual peace amongst human beings, not in spite of their diversity, but because of and thanks to this very diversity. But for this to be possible, to happen, the mere acknowledgement, should it be assumed to be a real and, even, daily occurence, or recognized as such, of contacts between languages, the immediate corollary of which should be the banishment of all forms of nationalism, of all forms of linguistic chauvinism, the dung whence originates the leaven of discord and on which thrive all expressions of bellicosity against the backdrop of a hostile and hateful rejection of any form, of even any semblance of diﬀerence, won’t suffice: what is needed is a constant and active reactivation, and activation too, of this contact, of these contacts, which unendingly transform and renew as many languages as possible and all of them if possible, in the whirlpool of a polyphony which, making of them aliens to themselves, brings them closer and closer to one another, for the advent of a new humanity which keeps enriching itself perhaps much more thanks to its diﬀerences, than it blossoms through what would constitute a celebration of its fundamental unity.