Studies in Multilingualism, Lingua Franca and Lingua Sacra

The present book comprises a number of studies centered around the topic of how knowledge diffuses from one culture to another, and how knowledge diffusion is connected with the spread of languages and the conceptual systems they carry by translation. This diffusion also takes place also over linguistic borders, in the way that a given receiving language may also absorb systems of knowledge from languages that are linguistically quite unrelated but culturally connected with respect to knowledge transfer. Thus we find that Sumerian concepts with considerable impact were moved into the Akkadian language, along with writing-systems, religion, science and literature, even though linguistically the languages are completely unrelated. Another example is how Chinese culture and writing systems spread throughout East Asia into Korea, Japan and Vietnam, though the languages of these countries were linguistically unrelated to Chinese. The same case can be made for Buddhist ways of thinking when it was clothed in the garb of Chinese or Tibetan, or one of the other languages along the Silk Road. This is also true for the spread of Manicheism, as it was portrayed in a great number of languages,