Importance Of Language Shift

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Language shift is a growing problem in South Asia where a number of indigenous languages are spoken. One factor which is common in one way or the other among all these languages is the erosion occurring in all these languages. Therefore, the issue of language shift (LS) and language maintenance (LM) attained a great importance in the early part of 1960s owing to the loss of many precious languages of the world. According to Ethnologue report (Lewis, 2009) around seven thousand languages exist in the world. However, 473 languages are at the verge of their death (Ibid). Some other figures display much bleaker picture of the situations of languages around the globe. It is also estimated that within each fifteen-day period, one precious language disappears from the scene of the world forever leaving no history behind. Given this situation, it is also guessed that approximately 5000 languages will have no existence on the …show more content…

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

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