Endangered Languages - Sofi Savarese


Sofi Savarese
Mr. Roddy
IHSS
9/11/19
Endangered Languages 
When I was looking for articles to read this one jumped out at me. I have always been really interested in learning about endangered animals, so when I saw this article I thought that I would give it a go. What I learned was really shocking to me and really interesting. The main thing that I took from it is that there are a lot of small communities and indigenous tribes that need help to preserve their language and keep it alive instead of letting it die off and become history.
       Something that is endangering the smaller communities of the world is language loss. Language is a very important part of a community and its culture. Most of their culture and religion is based on their languages, such as prayers, myths, ceremonial practices, communication to children, and more. If the tribe or community were to lose their language they would half to adapt and use different sounds that they are not familiar with and they will most likely lose a lot of their culture. There are 5,000 to 6,000 languages that are spoken in the world. But due to other stronger and more powerful neighbors, lots of communities will start to lose their language. Because of this, it is estimated that the number of spoken languages will fall down to the low thousands and even the hundreds in the next century. Not only their language will be lost, but often because the language is gone their ethnic identity will be stripped of them as well. Linguistics are quickly figuring out that we need to start helping these smaller communities, and there are a few originations and people that are quickly taking action. There are two main approaches that linguistics are starting to take. The first approtch is to work with the communities around the world that would like to preserve their language, Then going to other communities and teaching them the language of the indigenous tribes. The other approach is to document the tribe's language to save it in history. The documentation that they use is anywhere from writing it to video and audio taping a native speaker talking.
       After reading this information it really made me start to think about how all these other indigenous tribes are starting to fall apart. It makes me really sad to think about because all of these little communities make the earth special. It is an important aspect of our world that makes the earth more colorful, and I would hate to lose that. So I am really hoping that we can help save these communities.
   

Work Cited
Woodbury, Anthony. " Endangered Languages" Linguistic Society of America https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/endangered-languages. 

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