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| K. David Harrison | ||||
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According to the CIA, there are an estimated “6,768,181,146 people” on this planet as of July 2010 (give or take a couple ten-thousand). These people live in about 266 nations and sovereign powers. Of these people, the annual mortality rate is “8.37 as of 2009.” This crude death rate is a percentage out of 1000 people (have fun calculating that). Of those people who die, a few of them will take something with them that can never be replaced, a language.
According to National Geographic, “Some 7,000 distinct languages” exist on this planet. The catch is “one of them dies about every two weeks.” K. David Harrison is a linguistics professor and an activist in preserving these dying languages. On Friday, February 5, 2010, the last speaker of “Bo,” which once was a language once spoken by people over 70,000 years ago in India, had died and taken all of that rich culture and history with her.
Languages aren’t just how people communicate; it carries with it the vast history and culture of the people who spoke it. There are over 3,000 languages at risk and Harrison wants to ensure that they don’t completely disappear. A vast number of them have never been written down, but with today’s technology they can be recorded through film. Hotspot with the greatest risk from Siberia to Oklahoma to Australia, are all going to slowly die off without aid. These languages tell stories of how the people came to be, the stories they told, the solutions and records they kept on their surroundings, vast amounts of knowledge that has already been discovered by the people living there, but no way to record and analyze if the speaker has already left.
In all reality, this is awfully sad to know and realize. The main reason why most of these languages are becoming extinct is because of influence from a more dominant language. The youth finds it unnecessary to learn another tongue. That or with little use, the knowledge fades from their vocabulary. I once spoke nothing but Cantonese when I was young because that was all my family spoke. When I went to school for the first time, I had no clue what anyone else was saying. Eventually, I understood and started to become integrated in. However, as I spoke more English, I spoke less Cantonese. Cantonese is the third most spoken dialect that is used mainly in southern China. One day it might become an endangered language.
Reading these articles has made me feel terrible sad and ungrateful. I can understand the Cantonese spoken, but can only respond in broken phrases. I don’t know how to speak my native language fluently and my parents feel ashamed. I am too, considering that the next generation after me will feel even less in touch to their Chinese roots. They will not have the joy I had of a diverse household with a completely Asian mindset with values and experiences. To hear the tones but not produce it is saddening as I become more out-of-touch, and it is even more reviling in my sister who is only 4 years younger and does not speak really any coherent thought in Cantonese. Just because I don’t use it on regular bases, doesn’t mean I should forget it and all of its meaning. I hope to one day learn the language before it is too late and make my parents proud. School work, stress, and community are no excuses. I have forgotten because I have lost the insight to realize its true importance and need to recapture it through my mountain of laziness, work, and ignorance. In all reality, it is a dream and will probably stay that way.
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losing a language isn't that horrible, it's not as if you lost a culture. When a language becomes too old and impractical, it kinda makes sense to replace it with something a bit more up-to-date. It's like a house, when it becomes old and run-down, instead of holding on, people should knock it down and build a new one.
ReplyDeleteThat was a really interesting topic. I'd heard about languages dying before, but I never realized how often it happened or even how many languages there really were until I read your post. I like how you related it to your own life as well and that made it more accessible and personal to the reader. I had trouble understanding the last two sentences of your third paragraph, though - you may want to clear that up. Other than that, your post was great and I enjoyed the video as well. While I think that there are some things that are more worth saving than languages, if we can possibly save/record them for posterity, I think we should because otherwise, part of a culture will be lost. Nothing reflects culture like language.
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ReplyDeleteLike katelyn mentioned I never realized how many languages where out there that are slowly dissipating. Personally though I never really saw that much important in various languages. Like Hai said it is much simpler when viewing things from a wider view to have one language. All basically serve the same purpose which is to convey thoughts, ideas, feelings, information, etc. On a global scale, in the long run, it would be better to have a unified language. It would become easier to have joint experiments and collaborations. The benefit though of having these languages recorded would be to translate and dissect any information that has been encoded in that lost language. Without this reference or guide we could lose valuable information.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was reading this article it reminded me of the famous mathematician Évariste Galois. The night before a duel that ultimately claimed his 20 year old life he wrote down around eight pages of information. This became the basis of what today is known as group theory. Imagine what this man could have taken to the grave with him if he decided not to record and pass down his knowledge. This can go the same for anything in life not just mathematics or language.
@Hai: Losing a language is the start of losing a culture. The Native Americans are a great example of that. They needed to speak English, then as it became more important to integrate into White society. This then lead to their identity and cultural values being faded. Latin is a dead language, you seem so happy to have knocked down and pave over it with the four romance languages. You seem almost to have no appreciation for the deep process of how these languages came to b and have them fade out due to the imperialism of other dominate tongues. Pun pum kum tom, imagine phrases like this not being able to be used, it is unthinkable! Think about it and I will Pun pum kum tom you.
ReplyDelete@Kate: I will just let it slide; it is only a first draft after all. I will need someone to second that confusion, and then I might move to clear it up. I completely agree that on the list of things to save, languages have their spot, but clearly by these posts, people don’t even realize the situation. Not that immediate action must be taken, just awareness and consideration at the situation at hand.
@Matt: So you have no problem with blending the separate identities to one? It would make things clearer, but it would sacrifice all the information held the previous language. The current idea for a unified language is to have the most matched listing for one word like mom, madre, mama and make one based on the common pronunciations and amount people who uses it. Thousands of languages would not even stand a chance against the 6 official languages of the UN (English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Arabic, and Russian). I have never heard of Galois, but it sound like a very good story. If anyone reads my sources, there was a language that had some 58 names for the classification of bees and the slight differences they had because it was need for that culture. That language does not exist anymore and that kind of specific details that can only come from years of experience are gone and starts from the baseline again.
Didn't think I would get these many comments.
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