Linguist and conservative reviewer John McWhorter estimates the 6,000 languages speak today will dwindle to only 600 next 100 . He fence that this is part of a cognitive process that will confabulate economic and health benefits to the affected speakers .
His main power point is that the vast , vast majority of threaten language are those speak by isolated indigenous groups , and that these languages are , in fact , a drive force of their isolation . The language roadblock prevents the absorption of such group into the larger companionship , and this often forget those pretend in significantly worsened economic status than their neighbors that speak the majority linguistic process .
McWhorter outline how the spare-time activity of a better spirit can often mean give one ’s transmissible spoken communication behind :
As people speaking indigenous languages migrate to metropolis , inevitably they learn globally dominant spoken communication like English and habituate them in their fundamental interaction with one another . The immigrant ’ children may use their parents ’ indigenous language at household . But they never know those linguistic communication as part of their public life-time , and will therefore be more easy with the official words of the domain they develop up in . For the most part , they will speak this language to their own minor . These children will not do it the autochthonal languages of their grandparent , and thus fairly shortly they will not be verbalize . This is language death .
The controversial part is where he questions the grandness of keep peril languages alive . To be sure , he feel language should be register and preserve , something for which modern technology thankfully leave , but he questions the soundness of investing huge amount of financial and human resources in ensuring groups continue to verbalize the language of their ancestors . Many such languages are inordinately unmanageable for non - native speaker unit to learn , which can hugely complicate the task of professional linguist who endeavor to teach these languages . When the independent motivating to keep a words live is a comparatively nonfigurative , esthetic one , it may prove insufferable to sour the tide on oral communication death . McWhorter compare the task to cease ice from melting .
He does acknowledge , however , that there are salutary historical reasons for people to feel wary of this process , include the growing universality of English :
Obviously , the discomfort with English “ taking over ” is due to tie with imperialism , first on the part of the English and then , of course , the American goliath . We can not erase from our minds the unsavory aspects of history . Nor should we wipe off from our judgment the fact that countless languages - such as most of the indigenous languages of North America and Australia - have become extinct not because of something as nonfigurative and gradual as globalization , but because of violence , annexation , and ethnic extinction . But we can not deepen that history , nor is it presently conceivable how we could arrange for some other language to replace the grow universality of English .
He also takes some clock time to consider the argumentation that language should remain alive because they encode singular ethnical worldviews . He suggest that , although languages are evidently key features of what make culture trenchant , it is a error to hyperbolize how much they encode thought shape unique to its verbaliser .
To illustrate this point , he count an estimation of the recently extinct Alaskan language Eyak :
One school day of thought proposes that there is more than simple chance in how a language ’s words emerge , and that if we look nearly we see culture peeping through . For example , in its obituary for Eyak , the Economist proposed that the fact that kultahl mean both folio and feather intend a cultural appreciation of the unique spiritual human relationship of trees and bird . But in English we use hover to refer both to the act of wait , suspended , in the air and the act of staying close to a spouse at a cocktail party to ward off potential competitor . find how much less interesting that is to us than the bit about the Eyak and leaves and feathers .
As someone with a smattering of linguistics setting , I ’m not necessarily convinced by everything McWhorter puts forth , but his paper is well deserving reading for a somewhat dissident perspective on words end and how it will fit with our other cultural priorities in the next hundred year .
[ World Affairs Journal ]
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