Saturday, February 7, 2015

The villains named themselves with English words intentionally

Al-Qaeda, Aum-Shinrikyo, Boko Haram, Hezbollah, Islamic State.

I jot down some of armed extremist groups, just in alphabetical order. How do they feel respectively? How do they sound respectively? Every word has its own nuance, whatever language it is. Familiar words tend to leave a familiar impression on us. Does the last group mentioned above sound more familiar than the first 4 groups to English-speaking people?

I am 47 years old. More than 34 years have passed since I began to learn English as a second language in a junior high school. I'm old enough to realize that the masterminds of self-styled "Islamic State" have named their own group with familiar English words intentionally. They have done so with confidence in order to make it easier to recruit young people brought up and educated in advanced countries.

Generally speaking, young people are reckless idealists. And the information technologies are flourishing, especially in advanced countries. The masterminds of self-styled "Islamic State" recruit young people via the Internet, threaten governments via the Internet, and make videos of killing public to horrify people via the Internet. Technologies are always like a double-edged sword.

On the globe, there must not be a place villains can call their own.

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