SDLC 105: Discussion Post #8

Languages go extinct when they are not passed down by those who speak a language. Languages have to travel generationally in order to continue existing. Languages can also go extinct through extreme events that cause large groups of people to pass away. These events particularly could cause elders, who hold the language skills and cultural traditions of a group, to pass away, which can be detrimental to sustaining a language and culture. When a language dies, there are imminent consequences. An entire lifestyle, oral history, and belief system can be lost. Languages carry so much cultural infrastructure that is difficult to sustain with the loss of a language. Reflecting on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the loss of a language can also mean the loss of a perspective on the world. There may even be a lack of understanding of cultural artifacts, which will cause the beliefs and lifestyles of a people to be misunderstood or be completely unknown.

A dead language can be brought back to life with extensive enough resources and with efforts to propagate the standardized learning of that language. It becomes more and more difficult the longer the language is dead because artifacts and resources that could be used to revive the language will become less and less accessible. Linguistic diversity is being documented by linguists through in-depth research studies of archeological findings as well as how the makeup of languages has changed over time and space. Overall, language diversity should be documented and maintained in order to prevent further language death and the negative consequences associated with it.

E-mail me when people leave their comments –

You need to be a member of The SDLAP Ning to add comments!

Join The SDLAP Ning

Comments

  • I wonder if a new language was made in the modern-day, with sound bites and audio files, and maybe even video files, if we could resurrect languages? Even if there are no modern-day speakers, but there were enough samples to recreate the phonetics and more-or-less be able to discern phonetics from the script (although scripts are often not phonetic transcriptions, so I do not know if this would be possible).

This reply was deleted.

Blog Topics by Tags

Monthly Archives