Learning journal #7 – SDLC 105

[Ziwei Liao]

Since language is more than a tool for communication, the death of language can mean the loss of culture, history, and even an ethnicity. The language always ties to the culture, and it might be the most stable element of the culture. For instance, Korean food can adapt to American taste, but the language cannot blend with English. Also, languages represent history and might be the only source to delve into history. Many tribes do not have their own texts. In this case, word of mouth becomes the only way to tell history; therefore, the death of a tribe language can mean the loss of historical records. Most importantly, the disappearance of a language can lead to the “extinction” of an ethnicity or a tribe. According to the article, years ago, Siletz prevailed over other tribes; however, currently, there are only a few people speaking the language. As the article states that school is the enemy of tribal languages, I noticed that this fact is especially true in China. The government encourages mandarin, so there is decreasing number of people speaking dialects or tribal languages. Ethnic minorities in cities speak mandarin most of the time, thus they have already “become” Han people with an ethnic minority title rather than true ethnic minorities.