Language Rights in the European Union

The destruction of the tower of Babylon led, or so we are told, to the emergence of different linguistic groups. Meant to be a punishment to mankind for having had the audacity to try to erect that tower, mankind has fervently embraced that punishment i.e. the resulting linguistic differences. Indeed, there is a body of legal scholarship promoting linguistic rights as constituting essential human rights. But there is another side to that story: it may well be considered that not so much the linguistic differences as such but the fervency of their embrace has been the real punishment.