SDLC 105: Learning Journal 7

[Tenaya Bien]

This week we learned what happens when languages die. Although this tribe described in the article was able to revive a language on the verge of extinction, we lose hundreds of languages every year. The problem with losing languages is that not only is the language itself lost but also the history and culture of a people who spoke and/or wrote that language. In addition, in trying to revive a language that is almost extinct causes issues with diversity within the language. When there were hundreds, maybe even thousands of people who spoke the language in danger it can be assumed that there was more complexity to the language. While trying to preserve a language that may only have one or a few individual speakers left, the language then become limited to the vocabulary of that individual. It was also interesting for me to think about while many hundreds of languages are being lost, that also means that the world is becoming less diverse linguistically and therefore more people are learning the same languages and can understand people more universally.