This article gave me a new viewpoint on how languages can be maintained. In the case of the survival of Siletz Dee-ni, I found it fascinating and impressive that these people, who total to only five speakers left, have managed to create an online library to preserve the language. This reminds me of how Chinese has changed so much in the recent years. The article talks about how English, Spanish, and Mandarin are the "sweepstakes winners," but does not mention what happened to Chinese when Mandarin came into the mainstream. Simplified Chinese was created recently, and all Chinese-speaking countries were encouraged to abandon Traditional Chinese for the simplified version. China has fully adapted the Chinese language now and is pressuring others such as Taiwan to adapt the language. If Taiwan were to make the move, Traditional Chinese would be lost. This is a scary thought, as the majority of Chinese-speaking friends my age cannot read Traditional Chinese anymore and can only read Simplified. Even myself, I can crudely read traditional Chinese and can barely speak the language. I can understand the language, but I have difficulty speaking it.
Languages are not only lost from shifts in power, but from the immigration of families to other countries, for example Asian-Americans. Most Asian-Americans can only speak their mother language, and cannot write any of it. Imagine what would happen to their next generation of children, where the parents grew up speaking Chinese to their parents, but in general spoke English 90% of the time with friends and co-workers. Languages can be lost through the Westernization of cultures and I believe that all speakers of different languages should follow the example of the Siletz Dee-ni to preserve the language. If I had a database for learning Taiwanese online, it would be a great benefit to me in preserving my ancestry and culture.
Korean right now, is still popular enough to maintain itself as a language, but other languages should look to creating an online database.
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