Human Rights and Human Flourishing

1368 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Language death and its causes

Human Rights and Human Flourishing

A Research Essay on Language Loss and Efforts of Preservation and Revitalization

Languages are becoming fewer and fewer. It is not known exactly how many languages have been spoken throughout human history. Anthropologist’s best estimate is between 10,000 and 20,000 (Heiber). According to a report given by SIL International at the 26th Linguistic Symposium in August 2013, linguists have record of 7,480 known languages. 7,103 are still in use today, 4,710 are judged “vital” or safe while the remaining 34% are found threatened or near extinction (SIL, 25). Some anthropologists and linguists are greatly disturbed by these figures. They believe that minority language speakers are undervaluing their native tongue and consequently losing connection to their heritage. Moreover, they are concerned we are losing aspects of our collective human richness. To these, language preservation and revitalization efforts are of utmost importance. Others hold that language loss is a natural evolution, that we are eliminating communication barriers and trending toward more in common. They argue that if language preservation and revitalization efforts are to be made, they should initiate from community members on the basis of “community self-esteem” and not by those outside. By considering a scope of reasons why language die, a better understanding of differing responses to the decline of languages is hoped to result, as well as a more thought-through, developed position concerning efforts of language preservation and revitalization.

For a language to thrive it must maintain function in society. If a language is not considered useful socially or economically its speakers will not continue using it or teaching it ...

... middle of paper ...

...

Works Cited

Gibbon, Dafydd. “What Strategies For Revitalizing Endangered Languages Have Been Successful?” ResearchGate. Web. May 2014.

Hieber, Danny. “Why Do Languages Die?” Mises Daily. Jan. 4, 2012. Web. Apr. 2014.

Lisa Duchene. “Probing Question: What Is Lost When A Language Dies?” Penn State News. Feb 11, 2008. Web. May 2014.

Sampat, Payal. “Last Words: The Dying of Languages”. World Watch Magazine. May/June 2001, Vol. 14. No.3. Web. May 2014.

SIL International. “The World’s Languages in Crisis: A 20-Year Update.” Paper presented at the 26th Linguistics Symposium: Language Death, Endangerment, Documentation, and Revitalization. University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Oct. 2011. Final revision Aug. 2013.

“Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights”. Presented at the World Conference of Linguistic Rights in Barcelona, Spain. June 1996.

Show More
Related

  • Irish, The Corpse That Sits Up And Talks Back Analysis

    653 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Cultural Globalization Of Hmong In The United States

    1367 Words  | 3 Pages

    Even though the dominance of a language can allow for the loss of a culture, it can also bring awareness. In schools, local community centers and other various places, foreign languages are taught, not only do non-native speakers take on these languages but native speakers do as well to keep their culture. By doing so it “revitalizes cultures and cultural artifacts through foreign influences, technologies, and markets.” (Gerdes

    Read More

  • Anzaldua's Essay On Identity And Discrimination

    1291 Words  | 3 Pages

    Language is a means of communication and it varies from one community to another. Everyone has a mother tongue which depended on the family’s upbringing. A second language can be learned along the way. There are also instances where a person is born in a community that speaks two languages and therefore, had to learn both languages. The quality of the languages learned will be affected by how well the community speaks both languages. This can later develop into a new form of language. The essay describes the frustration of the author who felt rejected by different groups for speaking a different form of language. Her essay aims to gain sympathy from readers by seeing the issue from her point of view. Anzaldua attempts to achieve this in her essay by raising issues on identity and discrimination. She wanted to highlight that language is not determined by a country’s physical borders.

    Read More

  • Taking a Look at the Garifuna Language

    826 Words  | 2 Pages

    Day by day the World becomes more interconnected, we talk to people from other countries in languages that usually aren't our own, multi linguists now outnumber mono linguists and around 25% of the world's countries recognise two or languages as official (see Pearson). English has become the Lingua Franca of the world and native languages are starting to disappear. The fewer the number of speakers the quicker. One language that seems to have reversed the trend is the Garifuna language, indigenous to the Carribean coasts of Honduras, Guatemala and Belize. Unique in the sense that, until recently, unlike other native languages in the Carribean Area, it did not form a creole. In the following I will give a brief overview of the origins of the language, the structure, it's current state and the reasons why it has been able to resists the phenomenon of language disappearence.

    Read More

  • The singularly strange story of the English language in Puerto

    1339 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • English: The Official Language of the United States

    1323 Words  | 3 Pages

    The statistics of those not speaking English could lead to the idea that English is diminishing in certain sections of the United States. An example of this is shown in the article “Why the U.S. Needs an Official Languag...

    Read More

  • Essay On Multiculturalism

    1082 Words  | 3 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • English Should Be the Official Language of the United States

    1713 Words  | 4 Pages

    Not Only English: Affirming America's Multilingual Heritage. 1990. The. ERIC. Web. The Web.

    Read More

  • Voices Of The World The Extinction Of Language Summary

    1388 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.”

    Read More

  • Cherokee Language

    1827 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Joseph’s Dialect in Wuthering Heights

    1322 Words  | 3 Pages

    —. Language: Readings in Language and Culture. 6th ed. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.

    Read More

  • Advantages and Disadvantages of Simultaneous Communication

    1891 Words  | 4 Pages

    Language outreach by the united nations (2013). Home - Simultaneous. Retrieved March 14, 2013, from http://www.unlanguage.org/Careers/Interpret/COV/Simultaneous/default.aspx

    Read More

  • Root Words Gwen Westerman Analysis

    1006 Words  | 3 Pages

    Through colonization native languages begins to diminish amongst the world around them. Gwen Westerman writing in Root Words demonstrates the effect of colonization on language, “Our language/is like those prairie grasses/surviving the fires/of missionaries and their gods/floods of English words/drought, growing/in unexpected places as if it had never been gone/Makoce Kin etanhan/ enhipi. Ikce/ wicasta tehikapi/ Dakota iapi teunjihijdapi” (Gwen Westerman). On the surface of the prairie grass the native language may seem as though it has disappeared through years of endless colonization.

    Read More

  • Unalienable Rights And The Pursuit Of Happiness

    515 Words  | 2 Pages

    Unalienable rights are rights that cannot be taken away, transferred to others, sold, surrendered, or denied. The word unalienable comes from alien, or in Latin, alienus, which means something that is somebody else’s, strange, or alien. By the joining of the prefix un- that means “not”; its definition changes. This word is most commonly known due to the declaration of independence, where Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Hobbes’ description of rights attracted my attention.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Language Change

    1964 Words  | 4 Pages

    Languages are continually changing and developing, and these changes occur in many different ways and for a variety of reasons. Language change is detectable to some extent in all languages, and ‘similar paths of change’ can be recognised in numerous unrelated languages (Bybee, 2015, p. 139). Since users of language all over the world have ‘the same mental processes’ and ‘use communication for the same or very similar ends’ (Bybee, 2015, p. 1), similar changes occur on the same linguistic aspects, and in many cases these changes produce similar results in multiple languages. However, language change is limited by the function it performs. Languages must be learnt to such an extent which allows communication between the generation above and below one’s own (McMahon, 1994, p. 5). Hence language change is a gradual, lethargic process, as only small changes in

    Read More

More about Human Rights and Human Flourishing

Open Document