How do languages go extinct? Respond to the readings, and reflect on what happens when a language dies? How can linguists help preserve a language? Can a ‘dead’ language ever be brought back to life? What efforts are currently underway to document linguistic diversity?
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According to the interview with David Harrison, a language holds culture, history, and knowledge of a community. So when a language dies, their history and culture becomes merely existent. Losing a language also involves losing a lot of different means of expression. Listening to the interview and reading the article, I tried to reflect on what languages mean to me. Though I know several languages, Spanish is my native language and is the one that I feel most strongly about since it symbolizes my family, my Mexican heritage, and the history of my community. I began to wonder how I’d feel if my language was near extinction and I understand what David said about how those communities tend to feel a stronger sense of ownership of their language and are protective of it.
Languages go extinct when there are no publicly available resources to learn the language, the number of native speakers passing on their language decreasing drastically and dying out. Indigenous languages are more at risk due to globalization, urbanization, and the effects of colonization. Due to colonization, indigenous communities were displaced and were reduced to much smaller communities with a huge emphasis by the government in assimilating them into their new community. I think there is some hope that a “dead” language can be brought back to life so long as the proper documentation exists for language learners to study. Currently, David Harrison, a professor at Swarthmore University is studying several endangered languages by immersing himself in the community and documenting as much as he can with their consent while granting them full ownership of the material that is documented. He has recruited students to help him with this research and published media like books and documentaries to garner more attention towards this crisis.
Languages go extinct when a language loses its language speakers and the population that can speak the language grows smaller and smaller. Eventually, the language will be a second language to the next generation, and could disappear completely after that. The NYT article also explains how schools that teach children of a tribe a mainstream language will speed up the language death process. Currently, stabilization efforts are being made to preserve languages. According to the New York Times article, stabilization can be achieved by “creating a pool of speakers large enough that it [the language] won’t go away.” However, when that pool of speakers dies out, the world loses some of its linguistic diversity and people will conform to the mainstream languages that are spoken by the most people like English, Spanish, or Mandarin. The speaker communities themselves also lose pieces of their cultural heritage that may be carried through a native language. Once a language becomes a “dead” language, it is extremely difficult to bring it back to life. However, if a large enough pool of people who learn the language is formed, the language would be brought back to life. Although it is ultimately the native speakers who preserve a language, linguists can help preserve a language by documenting/recording speech and writing and bringing awareness to it. In the New York Times article, linguists help a tribe make dictionaries of the Siletz language and hold classes to teach children the language. To document linguistic diversity, linguists who do not speak the language being documented may immerse themselves within a native speaking community and learn how to communicate. In the interview “When Languages Die,” Harrison shares techniques like using a contact language or immersing within the community and learning the language itself. After this, the language can be recorded, documented, and studied. By knowing the language acquisition process, a linguist may be better equipped to share that experience with others or younger generations.
Thank you for sharing this. I agree with everything you said. I believe that it is extremely important to acknowledge the fact that the problem of extinction of languages exists indeed. We as a collective have to undertake all of the possible actions to prevent it and save as many extinct languages as possible.
Languages can become extinct when they are no longer practiced either written or spoken. This can happen during a period of colonization where a country might impose its language on another culture as a step to taking over, or people are taken out of their environment and there are very few opportunities to practice it, either with family members or other community members. A language can also die from a shrinking population as well and there are less people in the community to carry it on and preserve it. I believe that it mainly comes down to the lack of ability to practice it with. Linguists can help preserve a language by taking the time to learn it and practice it by immersing themself in that language if it still exists. Once they have a grasp or understanding of the dying language, they can write about it and start practicing it elsewhere and hopefully teach others. I think that someone’s true understanding of the language that they condense into written works is essential to reviving a language. They must not only know how to understand or utilize the language, but they must also know how to help people practice it when they are learning. Therefore, I think that linguists trying to preserve endangered languages should collaborate with a professor of a foreign language. That way, when the last person of that language passes, then there will be a translation dictionary/lesson on the language as well as exercises to emphasize building a true understanding instead of just memorizing words and orders. They will be able to form complex sentences of their owns eventually and then spread their learning to different audiences whether it be their peers or they come to teach it one day. Modern linguists like Harrison have been trying to preserve languages by traveling, immersing, and documenting themselves on their journey of language acquisition.
Languages go extinct when the younger generations in a small language community cease to learn the language from their parents and grandparents. This is usually an outcome of the spread of English and other major languages such as Spanish and French. English especially has become the de-facto global language for business, media, and pop culture. This can make younger generations averse to learning their local languages, due to its perceive lack of ‘purpose.’ This is of course false and leads to the loss of invaluable information unique to humanity, such as in depth knowledge of local ecosystems that can surpass the complexity of the current scientific consensus. Linguists can help preserve a language by talking to native speakers and documenting them speaking the studied language. A dead language can be revived, but only with great effort. It is essential to involve the younger generations through schooling. This was how the Siletz language was revived from near-extinction. Linguist K. David Harrison and professor at Swarthmore College has been travelling to ‘language hotspots’ where languages have been quickly disappearing. He embeds himself in the community to learn their culture and language, and then documents his activities in order to record the language for future generations.
I was very fascinated by the readings from this week. One of the articles talked about the abilities, brain capacity, and overall skills that come from being bilingual. Even though bilingual people are not necessarily smarter or more intelligent, the author of the ScienceLine article says that “being bilingual is the same as having great international friends: It allows a person to understand a different way of thinking, with unique philosophies and assumptions built into how others see the world”. I most definitely agree with this quote because being bilingual myself helps me understand cultural differences, acknowledge diversities, embrace distinctions, and learn from new perspectives that people from other countries share with me. Learning a new language means not just exposing yourself to new grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structures, it also allows you to learn about new cultures, countries, people, traditions, ways of life. Learning a new language makes you more open-minded, attentive to the cultural differences, and more educated in common sense.
However, languages can go extinct. This can happen when small communities who spoke a particular language disappear due to events such as war, natural disasters, etc. Unfortunately, the process of the language dying out is a relatively quick one. When less and less people share the same language, eventually it disappears and becomes useless. Sometimes languages go extinct as a result of cultural assimilation due to the language shift. The bigger and more popular languages which are the moving forces of our society, simply absorb not that popular, indigenous languages. According to the authors of the NYT article, “in the hurly-burly of modern communications, keeping a language alive goes far beyond a simple count of how many people can conjugate its verbs”. Some of the tribes, indigenous communities, or supporters of the language can create special dictionaries that capture the main vocabulary and language structures. “The 12 other dictionaries financed in recent years by the Living Tongues Institute, a nonprofit group, in partnership with the National Geographic Society… centered on languages still in use, however small or threatened their populations of speakers may be” (NYT). Therefore, supporting and financing those language programs and dictionary creation projects is one of preserving the language from dying out. Even a ‘dead language’ can be brought to life if enough of the people who know, speak the language can get together and create the source that captures all the basics of the language. All these strategies and actions are very important in order to maintain the language diversity in the modern world.
Attached is my discussion post 9:
discussion post 9.pdf