As the English language gets more and more prevalent around the world, more and more discussions will come up about what a global language would look like. David Harrison author of “When Languages Die” writes about what will be lost when other languages die out and another rises. Harrison focuses more on the negatives of what a global language would look like rather than the positives. The author of “Why a global language” writes about the good and the bad that would come from a global language. David Harrison writes in his book, “When Languages Die” that humans lose a lot of knowledge and culture when a language dies out. He believes that languages hold important value and if a powerful language like english takes over than history and heritage is lost too. Harrison writes that, “A language dies every 10 days” (5). This is an important statistic …show more content…
Harrison believes this a scary trend because most of what the human kind knows about nature and the natural world comes from memory and of unwritten languages. Those memories and knowledge have a significant value that could very well be forgotten. He also shows that much of what we know about medicine and plants come from dying languages that need to be revived. Culture is also lost when a global language takes over. Poetry, art, and jokes are lost when every language dies. When it dies it takes a long some of what makes humans unique and diverse. Language also gives linguistics more information about the human mind and cognitive function. Odd languages show how humans do not all think the same, but that there are many diverse ways to solving problems.
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.”
This leads to the negative viewpoint of cultural globalization, that “[it] can lead to a utopian world, [and] some believe it will cause less dominant cultures to be obliterated and economically developed cultures to prosper.” (Issit 1). Although the dominance of English allows for people to speak a common language many can understand, a downside would be losing knowledge of other cultures.
Language manifests itself at the very core of an individual. It provides the basis for how we observe the world and its phenomena. Different languages are capable of expressing thoughts that are exclusive to that language. too informalLanguages goes so far to allow people to express different personality traits and pertain to different cultures of the world, allowing for a great sense of community to emerge among those who share a languagenoice. Good thought but rephrase. While it is not the sole factor in all of these things, it provides much more than simply a means to an end. It influences different aspects of one’s life, and can come to lead one to how they choose to develop as a person. Language is a fundamental support upon which one may experience life.
What is language death? Campbell (1994:1961) as cited in Janse, M and Tol, S (2003) describes language death as the loss of a language due to gradual shift in the dominant language. Language death sounds stark and to say language death is like saying a person is dying (Crystal, D:2000, 1). It is a protracted change of a state (Mufwene, SS: 2004, 204). What are endangered languages? They are languages that are in the process of dying (Janse, M; Tol, S:2003). They are languages that exist under the shadow of a dominant language and are on the verge of becoming extinct (Lewis, M et al: 2014). Endangered languages are a serious concern in which linguists have turned their attention too (Lewis, M et al: 2014). The death and endangerment of languages across the world is a major concern among linguists and anthropologists (Crystal, D:2000).
Language loss is the loss of language or a portion of that language over time. Ken Hale said, “Language Loss is part of much larger process of loss of cultural and intellectual diversity in which politically dominant languages and cultures simply overwhelm indigenous local languages and cultures, placing them in a condition which can only be described as embattled” (Language 1992). It’s an unaddressed issue that is in continuous increase with no action taken towards it. A language is not only how someone talks or how a group of people communicate. According to an article written for BBC by Rachel Nuwer, the last century about 400 languages were lost. Most linguistic estimate that 50%
It has become the main way of communication and interaction for the whole world. This has put other cultural languages in danger, but the fate of these groups measures the distributed language and they have been protected and preserved. Endangered Languages Because of the inability to teach young children the language of their culture, the languages have begun to be endangered pulling through only by the effort of the community itself. The South Pacific and North America dominated by English and Latin America dominated by Spanish and Portuguese, are the regions with the most dying language.
Losing variation of tongues, vocabulary and grammatical systems decreases multilingualism because people are less forced to speak another vernacular. In other words, we lose unique sounds and words developed by humans after years of evolution, when languages extinguish. If they keep disappearing, humans will be forced to speak the same vernacular and the advantages of learning another dialect will get lost. Some experiments have proved that learning another language increases speakers’ communication skills. The internal parietal cortex area of the brain becomes denser when the speaker increases its capability to process information in various languages. Another point is that by learning another vernacular, it's expected for the speaker to gain a different interpretation of life. According to the New York Time Article Why Save a Language? “Yeli Dnye… has 11 different ways to say “on” depending on whether something is horizontal, vertical, on a point, scattered, attached and more…” (McWhortery, 2014, 2). Yeli speakers can relate the same word in 11 different ways because they have a broader vocabulary. Every language gives a unique pathway of thought to its speaker and has exceptional attributes. If a language vanishes before the world sees it or records it, then a small piece of humanity’s heritage
Web. 23 Apr. 2012. . 7) Wilford, John Noble. "World's Language Dying Off Rapidly." Www.nytimes.com.
The death of a language is more complex than it may sound. It does not involve the loss of only the words, grammar, sentence structure or the loss of the cultures of the community involved but it has adjacent effects. Language expresses exclusive knowledge concerning the cultures. To start with, extinction of a language leads to loss of people’s history. As well known the linguists studies people’s origin by studying their original language. Therefore, when a language becomes extinct it becomes hard to trace peoples’ history. People are left with numerous questions related to their origin. Death of elders in the community acts as a threat to the continuation of oral traditions. This means that the upcoming generation will lack most of the teachings passed to them by their elders through the word of mouth. Failure of teaching this children means that most of cultural practices and norms will not go past the present generation. The new generation remains with no norms to guide them. The introduction of a national education programm...
This essay will discuss how the English language contributes to globalization. It also shows some problems that arise from this. Furthermore, we will give or suggest some solutions for these problems.
Some indigenous languages have died with the elimination of their speakers through genocide or any other calamity. Secondly, many lost their existence because they were not documented and described. Weinreich (1953:68) defines language shift as a "change from the habitual use of one language to that of another". It means the number of speakers comes down in a downward movement, the speakers lose their proficiency and the language use decreases in every sphere of life (Baker and Jones, 1998). In this way, the minority languages shift their sympathies to the majority languages. The process of shift is sometimes so intense that the speakers of the weaker languages relinquish their local language completely (Rasul, 2006). According to Baker (2011) in the forthcoming century around 50 to 90 percent languages of the world will either die or will be on the threshold of
It has been adopted by different sectors making it one of the most used languages in the globe. This has been attributed to its effective nature, easy learning and rich history. However, conservative groups exist who argues that there should be global language since it may cause the emergence of superior cultures. Nevertheless, it is evident that different cultures ranging from the early polish immigrants, the African American community, the advertising and media will greatly benefit from the globalization of the English language. This will prove in the end that English is indeed a global
It can be seen that English has become a global language, which is determined by lots of factors like history, culture and daily usefulness. Because of these factors, the number of people who speak English is still increasing now. English, as a significant part of social life gradually exerted profound impacts on education, job hunting and international communication. Also, it provides the whole world with a chance to share ideas and communicate freely. We are quite curious to see the further development of English as a lingua franca in the
Finally, there are many different varieties of English, or as it is called Englishes, such as Singaporean English, Indian English and Nigerian English. Each variety of English expresses the identity and culture of its speakers. It has been predicted that in the distant future these forms of English will fragment into mutually unintelligible varieties. Therefore, this fragmentation may slow the spread of English as a global language.
In order to visualize the “global” as an adjective in the collocation “global language”, a study has shown the numbers of people speaking the language. According to them, there are about 6000 languages in the world and not surprisingly English is at the top of the list of most dominant. In the world there are 375 million first-language speakers, approximately the same number of second-language speakers and about 750 million foreign-language speakers (David Graddol, The Future of English? A Guide to Forecasting the Popularity of the English Language in the 21st Century. British Council, 1997). According to magazine Economist, more than one billion people speak some form of English. These numbers could make people think that English is really conquering the world which can be both positive and negative.