Linguistics Blog - Endangered Languages

Asher Forman
Mr. Roddy
IHSS
9 September 2019
Endangered Languages
     Throughout the world, there are thousands and thousands of languages that are spoken. These can range from English, which is one of the most popular, to a language that is only known by an indigenous tribe. Although, many of these thousands of rural languages will sure be gone due to many larger society’s expanding and/or invading these smaller ones, causing them to forget their language and forcefully assimilate to learn a new one. Losing languages have many consequences that include losing one’s culture, rituals, and most importantly, not being able to pass one’s language to the next generation (Woodbury).
     This article was very interesting as I had no idea of how many languages there are in the world. It's incredible to think about how such rural societies can build off of and invent their own language for their people to use. Another interesting thing that the article talked about was the solutions that would help with preserving languages. One of the solutions was going all around the world to different communities to help teach that language to others. Another solution was to essentially document certain languages so they wouldn’t be forgotten (Woodbury). I was surprised when reading this, as it takes a lot of work to travel places, and then help to try and preserve a language you might know nothing about.
     Once I read about how many languages are endangered, I researched more statistics on the endangerment of languages. It turns out that a language is lost about every two weeks. In fact, 230 languages became instinct between the years of 1950 and 2010. It is very sad as all of these languages that were lost could have led to new information on cultures, rituals, literature, and so much more. Although, with more and more people realizing that so many languages are at risk of being forgotten, there have been large steps on preventing this. There was an archive that was opened in New York in 2014 that was entirely dedicated to documenting languages. So even if some languages are unspoken among people, there will hopefully be information on them stored away so they are not forgotten forever (Strochlic).
     Although, how does the endangerment of languages relate to my life. Well, another solution for solving the endangerment of languages was for people to learn different languages. At the moment I speak English fluently and I am learning Spanish and Hebrew. While hundreds of millions of people speak English and Spanish, there are only a couple hundred thousand who fluently speak Hebrew. Hebrew isn’t a dying language yet, but it's possible it could be considering the small amount of people who speak it compared to English and Spanish. Even though I am one person out of so many, I am still helping to contribute to saving languages by learning about new ones, including some like Hebrew that might be more endangered than others.


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

Strochlic, Nina. “The Race to Save the World's Disappearing Languages.” Saving the World's Dying and Disappearing Languages, 16 Apr. 2018, www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/04/saving-dying-disappearing-languages-wikitongues-culture/.



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