THREE MAIN REASONS FOR THE STUDY AND DOCUMENTATION OF ENDANGERED LANGUAGES
- Each language reflects a unique world-view and culture complex and is the means of expression of the intangible cultural heritage of a people. With the disappearance of such a language, an irreplaceable unit in our knowledge and understanding of human thought and world-view has been lost forever, resulting in a reduction of the sum total of the reservoir of human knowledge as expressible through language, and of the usually rich oral literature and mythology of which that language was the instrument of expression;
- UNO and UNESCO have declared the right to speakers' own language to be a basic human right. Every language is a symbol of the ethnic identity of its speakers, which they hold dear, and which gives them the feeling of possessing some thing additional to what the usually monolingual speakers of large dominant languages have. Documentation of a language tends to keep it alive, and even if it becomes moribund or dies, the descendants of its speakers tend to clamour for records of it so that they can revitalize or revive it, as this is happening more and more in several parts of the world today;
- Maintaining knowledge of non-dominant and minority languages preserves a cultural diversity which is just as important as maintaining the physical biodiversity in the world which is nowadays clamoured for by many people.
I agree that minority languages, by which I mean endangered languages, need protection.
ReplyDeleteThe promulgation of English as the world's "lingua franca" is unethical and linguistically undemocratic. I say this as a native English speaker!
Unethical because communication should be for all and not only for an educational or political elite. That is the position of English at the moment.
Undemocratic because minority languages are under attack worldwide due to the encroachment of majority ethnic languages. Even Mandarin Chinese is attempting to dominate as well. The long-term solution must be found and a non-national language, which places all ethnic languages on an equal footing is essential.
An interesting video can be seen at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU Professor Piron was a translator with the United Nations. A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net