Endangered languages

What a shame it seems that so many languages are extinct or in danger of being so. There are almost 6,500 languages spoken all over the world, and UNESCO believes that half of them are critically endangered and may be out of use by the end of this century.

You would imagine that these endangered languages be found amongst the deep Himalayan mountains or on the Tibetan border, but this is not the case. Today Welsh, Guernsey French, Scottish Gaelic and Manx are still among some of the world’s endangered tongues.

In 2008 the Eyak language, spoken in the Alaska region became extinct with the death of the last speaker, and just recently, in 2010, Bo, the ancient tribal language died out.

Can the extinction of a language be considered positive or negative?

Many articles have been written on this subject. Some claim that a loss of a language does not imply the loss of a culture. Others say that keeping a language alive does not keep a culture alive. I personally believe that a language occupies an important place in any culture. What do you think?

It is believed that unifying global communication through English can only be positive as it avoids possible language barriers. However, this isn’t as black and white as it seems. There are many types of English spoken today.  Many countries official language is English, but the style of English used is different to that spoken by an Australian, for example. This variant in the English language is usually due to the fact that many countries adapt the English language to the grammar of their dialect or second language. The differences aren’t just a matter of accent. In Indian English, people say half-pants when they are referring to shorts, neckerchief to refer to scarf and Nes-coffee to refer to instant coffee.

“Lingua Franca” which is English used as a communication between companies is just another dialect of the English language. The queer thing about this is that most English speakers find it difficult to communicate with these types of speakers as the English is too different.

In conclusion, we could probably say that languages are in fact influenced by cultures and that unifying global communication through English is a hard task. I think that it’s a real shame to unify communication. 

Languages are impregnated with culture... We should at least try to preserve some of them, shouldn’t we?