I will try to expand a little my conjecture about non-existence of Nations. However, I have to say that I am not the first person to state that Nations do not exist. As far as I know, Karl Popper also stated something similar, see his criticism to the principle of national self determination on Conjectures and Refutations, Routledge, NY, 2002, p. 494-495. I also remember the first time I heard about this idea, a colleague of mine talked me about it. He studies history at university so I guess he read about this theory somewhere.

Well, let’s go back to the argument. I said in my previous post that I think that language communities actually exist. However, how do they exist?

I think what shapes a language community is a special kind of line or border, I will call it ‘the language gap’. By ‘language gap’ I mean the very basic fact that not every human can know every language.

Because human beings are not shaped only by instincts but also by culture and culture is elaborated and handed down mostly using languages, this creates a border, a wall among people who do not talk the same language, and this border, this wall actually exists.

However let’s focus on some key points about language gaps and communities:

• belonging to a certain language community do not exclude the possibility of belonging to an other one: we can currently speak more then one language
• the gap is not permanent: we can learn new languages
• the gap can be bridged even among people who do not talk a common language: translators actually exist

I think that this brief portrait is enough for allowing us to see the differences among language communities and the so called Nations:

• if you belong to a Nation, then you cannot belong to an other one at the same time
• if you belong to a Nation, then you will not be able to really become a member of a new one (maybe your descendants would be)
• there is no way to bridge two Nations, they have a kind of ontological distance

About this last point an immediate reply could be that Nations can be bridged by diplomacy. However I think that diplomacy is a matter of States, not of Nations. Someone could still reply that a State is a kind of instrument for the wealth and prosperity of Nations and I will shortly reply that personally I think that if States are actually instruments then they would be instruments for the wealth of their citizens more than of Nations, but I will develop this point further in a new post.

Anyway getting back to the relationship between Nations and language communities, my conclusion is the following: even if Nations existed, then they would not coincide with language communities.