Should minority languages be allowed to die out? Are they even relevant in the modern world?

Question

More than half the world's thousands of languages are in serious trouble and may die out in the next few decades. In most cases the causes are multiple, but in the end the younger generation simply doesn't learn, the middle generation understands but isn't fluent, and only the oldest speakers retain the full richness of the language.

Most of the the reasons are either political or economic- people are often forced by majority speakers to adopt the new language (even where minority speakers were the original population). In other cases the language is felt by speakers to be an impediment to economic success in the larger society. Yet most of the world's people are multilingual, so how can keeping the old language hurt you? Is it because it identifies you with a group held in lower regard by the majority?

How do you feel about societies that try to wipe out minority languages and culture? Is this healthy? Should effort be made to stop this, or reverse it? What if it costs money?

Answer 1

It is up to the people in that culture to pass that culture and the importance of that culture on. Sad to say, since there are so many cultures joining together through marriages, cultures will continue to be dilluted until there is hardly anything left. Luckily, this is not the end of the world...just a change. We can always read about it in history class.

Answer 2

As a linguist, and especially since I work with many linguists who are interested in minority language documentation and language revitalization, I have thought some about this issue.

I am somewhat of the pragmatic point of view that it's not the end of the world if minority languages die out, although I think your point about losing their culture also is pretty well-taken.

Languages die out because they no longer have social status. This often happens when the young people don't see a need to speak that language, since some other more powerful language is available. In a couple of generations, the old language is just gone.

However, as a linguist, I am interested in studying language, and if such a large percentage of the world's langauges (isn't it somewhere like 80%?) die out in the next decades, there will be a lot less evidence from the world's languages to help us do our studies.

There is also some literature and oral history available in minority languages that has not been translated into other languages or documented. Losing these would also be a shame.

Answer 3

If minority languages die out, then every person who spoke those languages would have to lean a new language. Until then, there would be a break in communicating in the world and then these people would be cut off from modern society until they learned a new language. They are relative to the modern world because there are a lot of countries with out an official language. Without that, there are minorities. Millions of people speak minority languages. It wouldn't be very smart to let languages that people speak die out. or example. Let's say that at least 1,000 people speak each minority language. If 100 of the languages were gone, that would be at least 1,000,000 people without a language.

Answer 4

societies don't eliminate language.

people eliminate their own languages by CHOOSING to go live in a city with jobs, food, air conditioning, and medicine. -- these people keep their first language, but their children will not. (other wise, the child would have to learn 3 languages; the lingua franca, the father's, and the mother's.) and the grand children then would most likely have to learn FIVE languages, only one of which they will actually use. (because odds are, that all 4 of their grandparents came from a different village.)

there are 2,000 languages in africa, 800 in new guinea, 200 in australia. these are gonna be the bulk of languages that go extinct over the next hundred years. a lot of these people live in jungles, have no medicine, and have real worries about whether or not their child will live past age 3. to preach against the extinction of languages is essentially to deny these people their right to the same lives that we have.




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edit #2

hey pags,,, you're kidding, right?

there's never a time when a language dies BEFORE its speakers.

Answer 5

From a linguist's point of view, when a language dies out, it is a tragic loss of valuable data that would otherwise help us understand language and human cognition better. If there were only one or two languages in the world, the study of language would be as difficult as trying to study chemistry with knowledge of only one or two elements. Needless to say, that aspiring chemist would not get very far in understanding chemistry. Similarly in linguistics, the fewer languages that the linguist has access to, the less it is possible to understand language.
Linguistics is a young science, when compared to physics and chemistry, but it has a very promising future. By studying language now, we are laying the foundations for many useful and practical tools in the future. Perhaps someday we will be able to understand what causes speech disabilities and find cures, or be able to make computers more efficient in language processing and develop artificial intelligence. None of this will be possible without a good understanding of how language works. This understanding will be much more difficult to obtain if many of these endangered langauges are not revived and documented. Therefore, endangered languages are extremely relevant in the modern world, from a scientific perspective. Besides, diversity is what makes our world beautiful.
We should therefore fight English-only legislation that will make endangered languages die out faster, and provides little or no benefit to those of us who already speak English.

Answer 6

lemme guess;
you're an American, who only speaks one language (and barely, at that) and the extent of your experience with other languages comes from your maid who has a mexican accent which you can barely understand, plus some statictics you read in the newspaper or learned about in a first year college course..
my advice is go out into the world, look around, learn to speak another language (if you can; many americans cannot) or at least try to communicate with people from a different socio-economic-cultural background than the one you have, and I'm NOT talking about some kid in your class that everybody picks on for being poor.
I have been in foreign countries and seen Americans approach strangers on the streets and verbally assault them, demanding that those people speak English, and complain that everybody except Americans must be stupid or lazy not to speak English.
You need to learn a little bit about what these languages are, how people live, and what kinds of things they have to say before you start asking questions like 'should we kill it or not?'

Answer 7

It is true that, if there is one language in the world it would be very convenient to travel the whole world. But history created so many languages as per its requirements in different parts of the world. As time is passing people are looking forward for easy life. For this, learning the most famous language in the world has been one of the priorities these days. Languages like English, Germany, French, Manderen are now ruling world. But parents of this generation should make sure that their kids will learn the local language first as they are going to live their first part of life in their mother country. Even if the language of the world becomes one, the history is going to repeat. You don't have to worry. New languages will come up.

Answer 8

None of the languages should be wiped out for any reason. People should learn English if living here, because it is our language, but they should keep their own identities intact by keeping their own language intact at home. I don't like it when any society tries to wipe out a culture or language and I do not think it's healthy for any of us..diversity is what makes our country great. Even if it costs money, everyone should know English, but everyone should also try to learn one more language, too. We are multilingual in society, so let's show the ones who are, say, Spanish, that we respect them by learning their language, too.

Answer 9

I was reading a book called Adventure Capitalist by Jim Rogers. In it, he mentions the celtic language and how people force their children to learn the language to keep it alive.

However, he makes the point that this language does them no good outside of a few hundred square miles. Knowing celtic is not going to allow these kids to advance themselves or open themselves up to international commerce. The world has become a global enterprise and the celtic language is not a player. The parents would have done their children much more good to have taught them a language such as Chineese.

Interesting point and perspective. I guess I tend to agree with him. I do think it is sad to see languages and heritages die, but live (and the world) move on.

I think that if a person comes to another country and wants to live in that country, they absolutely should learn the language of the country that they have moved to and learn to use it fluently. It is crazy to expect that country to bend over backwards for them.

Answer 10

If they're unnecessary, they're gone. What should occur are fewer languages for better communication and understanding between people. In a rational world, everyone would speak Esparanto as a second language. Esparanto was invented long ago as an easy to learn international language. Unfortunately, it has not caught on. I guess people would rather be nationalistic, fervently religious and xenophobic. That way the powers-that-be can easily manipulate people to exploit them and start wars.