It is reported that every year, there are hundreds of minority languages have been vanishing. Although governments have pour money in preserving these languages from dying out, some people would argue that it is not a good idea to waste tax revenue in this protection. Some people are advocates of protecting minority languages, because these languages can help people discover history and maintain culture diversity. Since some historical events are recorded in a particular minority language, and therefore, people are likely to forget those events if no one are able to understand the meaning of these less-used characters. For example, the disappearance of Indian language in North America has caused enormous difficulty for scholars to discover
Au Canada on compte probablement plus de 60 langues autochtones. La plupart des autochtones possède l’anglais ou le français comme langue maternelle et parlent à la fois une langue autochtone, d’autres n’ont qu’une connaissance passive de leur langue ancestrale. On estime qu’au moins 80 % des langues autochtones du Canada seraient actuellement en voie d’extinction. Les efforts menés pour sauver les langues autochtones sont cruciaux pour la protection de l’identité culturelle et la dignité des membres des Premières Nations du Canada ainsi que pour garder de leur héritage.
For this summary I watched a video called Voices of the World: The Extinction of Language and Linguistic Diversity. The video starts off with how people believe that there are about 6, 000 languages. David Crystal talks about how with all these different languages half of them are endangered of becoming extinct. Each different language offers a different point of view of the world and culture. He said that if different languages are lost then “we lose the meaning what is it to be human.”
In this country, we live in a mix culture and a mix race. When we walk out in the street, the first thing we notice is people from different ethnicities. The United States has always been the country where we come to make our dreams come true. Yet we never forget the country we came from. The languages is one thing we do not forget about our country but we should also know the English language. In this country it is essential for a person to know 2 or more languages. Regardless of how many languages we know, we all have a language we prefer over the other.
In “Why I Choose to Write in Irish, the Corpse that Sits Up and Talks Back”, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill argued for the survival of minority languages, especially her own Gaeilge (Irish) language. She compared the issue of preserving minority languages as important as the issue of the “preservation of the remaining rain forests is for biological diversity”. She fears that the death of minority languages and the dominance of English would “reduce everything to the level of most stupendous boredom”. (53) The author did not bash on the English language, only that if all other minority languages died and it was the only one that remained then the lack of diversity will just be plain dull.
The biggest difficulties Tan described in her reading are the ones related to her mother’s “broken English,” Tan felt ashamed of her mother’s English. She believed that “[her mother’s] English reflected the quality of what [her mother] had to say.” Native English speaker pretended not to understand nor even one word from Tan’s mother. In her reading, Tan describes a situation where her mom went to the doctor to pick up some test results and the doctors told Tan’s mother they lost her results, the doctors didn’t even apologize to Tan’s mother. After a while asking the doctors to call her daughter, Tan’s mother made Tan ask for the results, and magically the doctors apologize and told Tan they were going to do their best to find the results. If Anzaldua would have a chance to read Tan’s essay, Anzaldua would described Tan’s mother situation as a “linguistic terrorism.” According to Anzaldua “linguistic terrorism” is the “repeated attacks on our native language diminish our sense of self.” Again, tolerance and immigrants seem not to fit in the same sentence, but what is interesting is that Domenico Maceri, a U.S writer, in his essay “America’s Languages: Tower of Babel or Asset?” he claims that “Learning English is important
Language plays a huge role in everyday life- connotation, denotation, etymology, idioms- all of these things come into play. We as English-speakers sometimes have trouble understanding certain expressions or accents- imagine the Price family trying to decipher French and Kilangan.
Anzaldúa's main point in the essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is that Language is important and part of who we are. People should not be forced to speak another langue or criticized for speaking their own language. Anzaldúa says “So if you want to hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity - I am my language”. (pp.416) Language defines who we are. and when we are forced to change out language we are forced to change who we are.
Language is a mean of communication in any given society. It represents the ability to evolve and progress through the ongoing process of living with other human beings. Many can perceive this instrument as tool of liberation and transformation but others as an instrument to enslave, manipulate or oppress a group of people. Whichever the case one need to acknowledge that it is necessary and not a waste of time the many different discussions about this ongoing topic regardless of the time period or social context any country might have. In Puerto Rico, there has been an ongoing dilemma about languages; Dr. Alicia Pousada examines on her essay what many might define “the language madness on the island”. Throughout this paper some of her most interesting ideas will be shared and discussed so that this already extended topic might find another page to take place.
One outstanding challenge that the Canadian policy presents is the subjective concern towards language as both a marginal and intrinsic loss to the minority populace. The challenge is not the coexistence and complexity of multiple lang...
Bilingualism, a very controversial topic to debate in today’s United States. People generally define bilingualism as the ability of using two languages that individuals have. However, this is not the reason why that bilingualism becomes such a debatable issue. In this case, bilingualism is defined as the government’s use of languages other than English for public services in order to support the immigrants’ lives in the United States. People who support bilingualism want the government to continue having this kind policies. They think that bilingualism helps immigrants to assimilate into the American culture and moreover, it will unify everyone who are on this land. Although bilingualism provides some kind of benefits toward immigrants, they cannot solve the problems in the deep root. Bilingualism should not be continued in the U.S. Why? It reduces the immigrants’ incentive to learn English, threatens national unity, and costs so much.
Language can bring people together but can also isolate. The United States is known as a melting pot, not only does that refer to culture but also the many different languages. We know of language barriers, but very seldom do we think of the language barriers within our borders. Even with the language barriers it solidifies the need for a national language, the United States of America should allow the freedom to express one’s culture while maintaining English as our national language, therefore offering common ground to its citizens.
In the United States, an emphasize in learning the dominant language, English for example, can inevitably put other languages within the country in extinction. In reality, there are many other spoken languages in the United Sates, like those spoken by Native Americans, that are becoming endangered because of the immensity of more used languages. One may ask, what is an endangered language? According to Michael Cahill (Bonvillain), who has studied and researched many different endangered languages around the world, a language is endangered when "it is in fairly eminent danger of dying out." Cahill states two ways to quickly identify when a language is on its way to becoming endangered. One is when the "children in the community do not speak the native language of their parents, and the other is when there are only a small number of people left in the ethnolinguistic community" that know how to speak the language (Bonvillain). In specific, the Cherokee language fits into the category of an endangered language in the United Sates because less and less speakers speak it and because it is taught less often to younger generations as well. Although Cherokee, a language containing its own rules in grammar, morphemes, syntax, and phonetics, was once a language spoken in vast areas around the United States by native peoples, the language struggles to survive albeit historical foreign attack and current domination of other languages such as English.
In today’s society, especially in the United States, most people are monolingual English speakers. As a result, these monolingual speakers are at a significant disadvantage compared to those who speak more than one language fluently. This disadvantage is crucial to realize since it is important to learn how individuals and the nation can be enhanced. Multilingual speakers have an advantage in global affairs that involve countries that speak different languages. Speaking multiple languages makes it easier to communicate with people when involved in foreign affairs. Those who speak multiple languages are also more aware of other cultures in society. Monolingual speakers are not as exposed to other cultures and have difficulty understanding or even recognizing them. Furthermore, being multilingual increases your
To commence this discussion, it is first essential to establish an understanding surrounding the role of language in relation to national identity. Theoretically, the more power language has in this relation, the more powerful language planning may be when creating a national identity. However, the role language plays in this respect is somewhat problematic to define and has proven to be a debatable topic among nationalists, sociologists and sociolinguists. For instance, May demonstrates that ‘sociological commentators, unlike sociolinguists, have generally been loath to apportion a prominent role to language in the explanation of minority ethnic and national identity claims’ (2001: 8). Consequently emulating distaste from sociologists to credit language with significant power in a national identity. In a similar sense, de Vries notes that, in relation to a language community, ‘social scientists have generally ignored the systemic properties of language’ (1991: 39), thus, concurrently suggesting with May, a disagreement from the social sciences over the role of language in terms of identity and national identity. Similarly, circa the French revolution, the concept
Advantages and Disadvantages to Adopting a Single European Language Imagine the United States having more than one official language. Imagine that almost every state spoke a different language. Life in the United States is not like that. In fact, there are shortages of Americans who actually want to learn a second language and retain it for future use. But the notion of a multilingual country is not far fetched.