What is the value of preserving indigenous language?
What is the value of preserving indigenous language?
Consider language as a living species. If an language dies out - extinction- what might be the cause of it? Probably that species was consumed by the predator tongue. The economic power, military power, and culture prestige decides whether or not the language will survive. When one species of animal dies out, it has the power to threaten the whole ecosystem and can even cause the world to diminish- whether or not that species was giant or small. This is the same for indigenous language - extinction of one language has great powers.
As New Yorker Article says, "the loss of languages passed down for millennia, along with their unique arts and cosmologies, may have consequences that won’t be understood until it is too late to reverse them.”
Indigenous ideas about certain topics have always been an important topic- especially the language. The language acts an important role when defining a culture. In other words, as language dies, it can threaten the culture itself as the teachings, oral customs, and other inherited knowledge are no longer transmitted to the next generation. However many people think that loss of an obscure, incomprehensible language does not mean such an importance when in reality, the culture itself is dying.
In conclusion, the value of preserving indigenous language is too big to describe. It is important to preserve the language. The loss of languages can impact us in many powerful ways in times when it is too late to reserve them.
Consider language as a living species. If an language dies out - extinction- what might be the cause of it? Probably that species was consumed by the predator tongue. The economic power, military power, and culture prestige decides whether or not the language will survive. When one species of animal dies out, it has the power to threaten the whole ecosystem and can even cause the world to diminish- whether or not that species was giant or small. This is the same for indigenous language - extinction of one language has great powers.
As New Yorker Article says, "the loss of languages passed down for millennia, along with their unique arts and cosmologies, may have consequences that won’t be understood until it is too late to reverse them.”
Indigenous ideas about certain topics have always been an important topic- especially the language. The language acts an important role when defining a culture. In other words, as language dies, it can threaten the culture itself as the teachings, oral customs, and other inherited knowledge are no longer transmitted to the next generation. However many people think that loss of an obscure, incomprehensible language does not mean such an importance when in reality, the culture itself is dying.
In conclusion, the value of preserving indigenous language is too big to describe. It is important to preserve the language. The loss of languages can impact us in many powerful ways in times when it is too late to reserve them.
I see your stance on this topic and I agree with the cultures dying out happening in combination with the languages. However, do you personally feel like preserving every language is important? It has been bad in the past having lost valuable information, but it is not something our modernising world cannot replicate or rediscover.
답글삭제(I like the comparison of languages to species)
I understand how if a language is extinct the culture with it dies, however in the early paragraphs you were talking about how the world or ecosystem could be threatened. This is assuming that the language plays a major role in the overarching communities they are a part of, which tends to not be the case given that despite a language dying every two weeks the world still hasn’t collapsed. It could be argued that we even improved our means of communication globally due to the greater centralization of languages.
답글삭제