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Notes -
You are spot on with the difficulty of b1->c2 and Anglos seemingly thinking they know a language at about a2 level. Passport bro Spanish might as we’ll be a new creole at this point.
But I don’t agree at all that language is just a tool. Obviously it can be wielded like one when necessary, but for most people the significance of the languages they speak and teach their children is that your language determines your group identity much better than any other marker. You literally cannot be part of a society if you cannot speak its languages to the desired degrees (in modern nation states this is often a single language spoken to native level, but historically it can be multiple languages spoken at different levels like my example of the Ottoman Greek). Any shift in culture and identity must go hand in hand with language shifts. If your children don’t speak the same languages as you you can bet they will find your culture foreign.
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