Does language really need saved? The book believes that all 6,000 languages in the world need to be saved in order to keep the diversity of the world intact. They compared it to an endangered species on the wildlife list. However, I disagree with the book and do not believe that every language needs to be saved. Having to save every language is extremely time consuming and not worth the effort. Having so many languages makes communication complicated. The world already has enough problems in its interactions with the other people, there is no need to make an interaction more complicated by not being on the same wavelengths with communication.
Coming from an English background and traveling abroad to cultures that do not have English as a native tongue, I have seen the difficulties in properly communicating what one wants to say. One can become frustrated when he or she is trying to convey something to another person that does not understand what he or she is saying. What saved me while I was abroad is that many people spoke some form of English. These people were interested in adopting the English language because to them it was seen as the language of the world. Since I speak English I like to think that everybody would like to speak that language. I respect people for wanting to maintain their own culture by speaking their own language, but I do not want to have to do a business meeting in their language. Whatever the majority speaking language in the world is at the time should be the basis as to what should be learned by everybody in the world. For instance, since there is a large influx of Hispanic people in the United States, I have worked hard in speaking the Spanish language because a large portion of people I could potentially come across might only speak Spanish. Yes it is important to keep your own culture and own tongue. However, it is more important to be able to effectively communicate with other people in the world. Communication is the basis for successful interactions and relationships. That is the primary purpose for why we study a language. Having to understand possibly 5000 different languages in order to communicate with all 6 billion people on the planet is unrealistic and absurd. We should all agree to understand one universal language and then go from there on whether we want to speak another language.
Although I went on a rant here about language needing saved, I just wanted to briefly touch on how languages are created. The book gave so many theories and scientific explanations as to how language came about that it proved that nobody really knows how language came about. There is always a hypothesis but nobody can actually prove how language came about 4000 years ago.
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