Blog 7

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"One language dies every 14 days. By the next century nearly half of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken on Earth will likely disappear, as communities abandon native tongues in favor of English, Mandarin, or Spanish."


      This article titled "Vanishing Voices" really puts into perspective how languages are wearing out. The above quote is a perfect example! Nearly half of the languages spoken on Earth will be gone, as well as every last meaning of every last word gone with that language in order to assimilate with the more popular dialect. Languages spoken by very few people are mainly spoken by older folks who lived with that language in their culture. As people diminish, other people within that group need other people to communicate with; for that reason, people turn to other (more popular) languages to merge into. This gives us a taste of how languages are drastically dying.
      The author of this article mentioned how you would think that out of the 7 billion people on the earth, that the give or take 7,000 languages spoken with it would be spread out evenly to give each language 1 billion people so that they can flourish and live on. That is not the case, for "seventy-eight percent of the world's population speaks the 85 largest languages, while the 3,500 smallest languages share a mere 8.25 million speakers."
      In my eyes, it is really sad to automatically have a good guess that almost half of languages, all with a unique background and culture, will come to a close. Imagine if English was dying down. (Obviously it is not since it is one of the most spoken languages in the world). But imagine that every last word ever spoken would be put to rest as each person in your community passes away. Every favorite word, and memory along with that word, is gone forever. What a sad thing to think that older people with the languages of Tuvan, Aka, and Seri will most likely not see their grandchildren speak their native language.
      What good came from this article is that people with dying languages mostly wanted to see their children and/or relatives succeed. For that reason, they wanted their children to live on with a better chance in receiving a better education and more opportunity. Only knowing their small-spoken language doesn't give that much opportunity for advancing. A lot of these parents were encouraging in promoting a language that will help their child live a great life full of new and exciting possibilities! Now that is certainly a beautiful thing!