[Photo By: KPA]
Front building (part of a "twin" structure):
Absolute World is a Residential condominiums twin tower skyscraper complex in the five tower Absolute City Centre development in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. The project was built by Fernbrook Homes and Cityzen Development Group...at 50 and 56 storeys. [Source: Wikipedia]And more:
In Mississauga, Canada’s sixth largest city, Beijing-based MAD saw fit to embrace not only a global trend for curvaceous skyscrapers, but also for satellite developments to express the town’s individuality. [Source]------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tower of Babel, in biblical literature, structure built in the land of Shinar (Babylonia) some time after the Deluge. The story of its construction, given in Genesis 11:1–9, appears to be an attempt to explain the existence of diverse human languages. According to Genesis, the Babylonians wanted to make a name for themselves by building a mighty city and a tower “with its top in the heavens.” God disrupted the work by so confusing the language of the workers that they could no longer understand one another. The city was never completed, and the people were dispersed over the face of the earth.[Source: Tower of Babel, in biblical literature, structure built in the land of Shinar (Babylonia) some time after the Deluge. The story of its construction, given in Genesis 11:1–9, appears to be an attempt to explain the existence of diverse human languages. According to Genesis, the Babylonians wanted to make a name for themselves by building a mighty city and a tower “with its top in the heavens.” God disrupted the work by so confusing the language of the workers that they could no longer understand one another. The city was never completed, and the people were dispersed over the face of the earth.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Source: Britannica.com]
Languages spoken in Mississauga
Below is information from City of Mississauga: Population, Demographics and Housing: Updated July 2017
The percentage (3.1% here, 1.8% there) quickly adds up to the overall 26% (3/4) of languages spoken in Mississauga that are neither French nor English! And these are the ones that made the cut. In terms of raw numbers, significant portions of the population speak languages other than English (or French), and which are not one of the major world languages like Spanish or Italian. For example, 0.3%, or 69,000, of the Ontario population speaks Farsi. This information is from the 2011 census. By the 2016 census the number has grown by 20,000 to 80,000 Farsi speakers. This is a 33% growth in five years. How this occurred is not clear and is probably a combination of births and new immigrants. But the significant information is that an additional 20,000 people declared Farsi to be the language they speak most often in their homes by 2016.
Now think of those numbers in terms of all those 1.8%, 3.1%, 4.2% increases in languages that are mostly from Asia and Africa. And these are people who say that these are languages most often spoken in their homes!
At some point there has to be discords in communication. I have written numerous times of lack of understanding (or awareness) of words and phrases by shop keepers and sales women (usually younger women) of non-White origin who DON'T understand what I am asking them. And these could be second or third generation immigrants. The kinds of language and communication may not include some old (they may call it archaic) idioms and vocabulary. It is disconcerting because I never know when they may slip and close shut the doors of communication.
And as ethnic groups invariably start to group together as their numbers increase, they begin to speak together in their own jargons and accents, and start introducing words and phrases from their lands and origins within their English communication. English becomes modified into some kind of "patois" with regional influences: Indian patois; Chinese patois; Arabic patois (regional - Syrian patois, Egyptian patois, etc.). And so on.
So a modern Babylon in Multicultural Mississauga is a distinct reality. Not now and maybe not in ten years but somewhere down the future.