Tuesday, March 5, 2013
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!
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You have made the death of a language seem as sad as that of a person. I also agree that in a different way it is sad for a language to die out. It seems unfair that something that was once so important and productive for a group of people can just vanish. It would be amazing if there was a concrete way to preserve the language even after the death of the individuals. However, as we have been learning, that is near to impossible, as the brain is unparalleled in puttting together all the aspects required for a language. Languages are so complex that no writing, videotaping, etc. could ever do the spoken language justice or capture all of the language computing that a native speaker's brain would do. There are just some parts of language that lose some of their functionality when people attempt to reduce them to be put on paper.
ReplyDeleteIt really is sad and weird how there can be so many people in this world and the languages can easily be reduced so quickly. The chance for the child to succeed does make sense though. It just seems like people should at least keep their young informed on their original language because it could also help them out someday in some way. Thanks for the great post!
ReplyDeleteIt's sad to realize that languages fade away as time goes on. I agree with you that only older folks speak a certain language because they grew up in that culture. Languages change as time changes and as even people change. It's just not right that having millions of people living on Earth, languages are fading away, it's just not right.
ReplyDeleteI think is really sad how many languges are dying around the world.i can't even imagine how many language are already extinct
ReplyDeleteI told a friend that a languages disappears every 14 days and they didn't seem to care. I really don't think most people can even fathom losing their language because its such a basic part of who we are. Its so sad that people have to die knowing that they take an entire language with them.
ReplyDeleteUntil I took this class, I never even thought about languages disappearing. It's one of those things that you think can't happen because in theory, a ; language should be passed down from generation to generation. I guess thats not the case.
ReplyDeleteOf course there's always the general (which is still a big deal): We lose a language then we lose heritage and culture and such. But don't people know that the more languages there are, the more languages we get to learn, and the more languages you learn the smarter you become.
ReplyDeleteSomeone has to be with me on that one.