Learning Journal #7 SDLC 105

  • Respond to the reading, reflecting on what is lost when languages die.  (You might want to watch the interview with David Harrison posted to the front page of the Ning.) 

From what David Harrison and the article talked about, there's not a concrete thing which is lost when languages die.  It's more of a feeling that something very precious is lost and it's very saddening.  I would also add in and I'm sure they both touched upon this, is that when languages die, so does a whole history and culture.  The aging population of a dying language makes it hard for those languages to continue to try and exist.  But by trying to make a dictionary or get young people to be interested in the language is the solution which people who speak a dying language are resorting to.  They said that every two weeks a language dies and that there are about or more than 7,000 languages.  That is such a huge number of languages, yet at the rate of language decline, it's really concerning.  I think it's so beautiful that we can speak 7,000 different ways, describing life in a different way.  It's so sad that nothing is being done to prevent or further reserve these languages on a global scale.  

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