How can language be a significant cause of human conflict and violence of people against one another?

Answer 1

It can be a source of conflict if a majority group (or at least, a group that has the power) has no respect for the groups with the minority languages (or at least, that has no power even if it's language is used by a majority of people).
Language is one of the main sources of identity of a population. If you kill or forbid a language, you kill a big part of people's culture, and some of its main particularities. Québec is Québec because of its French heritage ("Je me souviens" = "I remember" written on cars). Without this, for people in the world, it would be a part of Canada... beautiful place but people would never really heard of "Québec". But people there fought to preserve their language that was officially unrecognized during a long time by the English-speaking minority that was ruling the Province. Now, people in the world know that Canada has a province called "Québec" with a particular culture.

I can give you another example with Belgium. The sources of problems in Belgium between Flemish (Dutch-speaking) and Wallon (French-speaking) people come from the birth of country in 1830.
The elite bourgeoisie (both from Flanders and Wallonia) was French speaking, whereas a majority of the population spoke Dutch and Flemish dialects. They tried to impose a preeminence of the French language, and showed disrepect to the other language (in schools it was written "forbidden to speak Flemish and to spit on the ground").

The Dutch language was recogized officialy only decades after; and Flanders is taking its revenge now (the 1968 "Walen buiten" = "Wallons, out !" episode in the Leuven university is famous : French-speaking students and teachers were forced to leave the university, and to go in a new one).

To be honest, the problem is not only the language now, but also economy (Flanders is a rich area, whereas the once-rich Wallonia has more problems of unemployment) and cultural. But it was its source. But now, the country is clearly divided in 2 parts, with only Brussels being officially bilingual. Of course, people from both sides don't really hate each other, and I didn't hear of Wallons shooting at Flemish and vice versa - Belgians from both sides are very nice people. But the problem is "in the air".

Answer 2

I don't believe it - a real question!

Languages - because they represent the entirety of a culture's past and current experience - express what individual speakers cannot. Words like "crusade" and "jihad" are good examples.

In a Mulsim context, "jihad" refers primarily to the inner struggle to be good and do well in the eyes of God. In the context of the West, it has come to mean a sworn oath to destroy another group of people. Likewise, the English word "crusade" has been used in a jocular way to describe a person's cause or passion. That's a far cry from the original meaning, which is a sworn oath to destroy another group of people! (The meaning in the Muslim context, therefore, is the same.)

The propogation of such mutated meanings is helped greatly by the mass media. Television et al. speed up the process of altering how language is understood by their consumers, and thus participate in the rapid rate of change in languages currently seen in English.

Answer 3

Langage is how we express ourselves. There are wonderful, beautiful words of life and there are gross, vile, ugly words that cause conflict and unhappiness. People can speak words of encouragement or speak hurtful cruel words. "Choose ye this day words of life".