Two reasons to be concerned about language extinction
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...
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 essay starts off by talking about a common belief shared by many parents now about how students miss out on “a great deal by not being taught their family’s language”(Rodriguez 525). But the author states that this isn’t always true especially considering the children who are socially disadvantaged in any way, they more than likely consider their native tongue or the language used at home to be just that a private language that should only be used around or with the family, he also highlights how odd it was that his childhood classmates
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
Most people who grow up with a foreign language spoken in there house grow up with an advantage in society. This advantage can only occur once the individual learning that foreign language also learns the dominant language spoken in that country. Once both of these languages are learned and mastered, the individual has now placed them se...
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.
Scholar Dominique Ryon, best known for her work in linguistics and anthropology at the University of Louisiana, focuses the following article on the topic of Cajun French language loss or rather, language revival in Louisiana. Her article is based on the very concept of language loss and/or death studies. Due to the reasons she mentions later in her article, Ryon prefers to focus on language revival as she has noticed clear holes in the research evidence used in the study of language loss. Ryon uses the theories of many well-known theorists such as Foucault, Bourdieu and Lafont to challenge scholarly articles written on language loss in Louisiana. Ryon organizes her article into clear, concise components in order to support her two main objectives
Evaluating an article is a good way to understand what an author wants to do and tell the readers. In his article, “Let Them Die”, Kenan Malik mentions two types of language, common languages such as English and Spanish, and dying language such as Native American language, Catawba. (Kenan Malik 85) Those dying languages are lost in every two weeks. (Masci 942) His main argument is that language death should be acknowledged rather than trying to keep it. His ideas that include the main argument which common language is better than dying language are explained by using many examples such as linguist’s quote and references. Based on some ideas and examples, he tries to tell readers that common language has more advantages than dying language.
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 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.
Web. 23 Apr. 2012. . 7) Wilford, John Noble. "World's Language Dying Off Rapidly." Www.nytimes.com.
American Indian languages is a vital importance to preserving the American Indian culture. Language is much more than communication. When we talk about it on the surface, that’s what it is. But language is the way we think. And it’s the way it’s been handed down through generations. And if you lose the way your family has been speaking, you lose who you are. If languages dies, some consequences that will occur in the family level will be the loss of inherited knowledge which includes, traditional and contemporary cultural expressions, values, cultural heritage, rituals, legends, folk tales and many more. Language and culture go hand in hand together. So if language dies, culture will go with, as well as something personal. A degree of one’s
Have you ever wondered who taught you to talk the way you do? People learn to talk and express themselves everyday of their lives. Starting from the day you were born you used language or some form of it to communicate with those around you. As a baby you usually show your displeasure with your new surroundings by crying, and if you don’t the doctor will make sure you do. Everyday we express our point of view to others in some form of language. Whether it is through verbal communication, written discourse or through body language, you can tell if a person is upset, angry, or happy. We as human beings don’t realize how much language has to do with our lives. How can you determine if one of your friends is angry with you? Is there a different tone to their voice? Do they have a stern look on their face? Of course they do, your friend feels the need to express their anger to you by these different forms of language. Where do we learn to use these different forms of language? How are our uses of these languages shaped? The three main contributing factors to how we express ourselves through language come from our schooling, our friends, and most of all from our families.
In our largely ethnocentric (The idea that your own group or culture is better or more important than others) daily lives, we really take-for-granted our way of living and we often lose sight of the fact that there are other ways of living and in so doing, we forget that there is much we can learn from other cultures. Culture is defined as something relating to a set of shared attitudes, values, belief, practices, ideas and social behaviours of a society that differ depending on the language you speak, where you live and your religious beliefs. So we ask if it matters if cultures are lost if some cultures are on the verge of extinction but even preserving those tiny indigenous languages and cultures are vital to keep the world a diverse multicultural place and to learn different ways of living and multiple other things from each other. Cultural globalisation (Cultural globalisation refers to the exchange of ideas, meanings and values around the world in such a way as to extend social relations, advancements in technology are the main cause of it) has is making it
Whether we are aware of it or not, we partake in communication practices every day. This can be as intentional as a verbal response or something out of our control like a yawn. These verbal and non-verbal behaviors working together produce some sort of result, whether it is maintaining a relationship, completing a project, or influencing others. To successfully demonstrate this process, we will be analyzing a scene from the new hit drama known as “The Good Doctor”. This scene takes place in a highly stressed environment where the clock is ticking for a young boy’s life.
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