When a Language Dies

Language & Culture

Aiden Yeh, Ph.D.

Wenzao University

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• Our parents' and great-great-grandparents' memories, after all, tell us not only of the world before our time, but of who we are and where we came from. They give us our pride, our shame, our sense of grounding and roots, and a sense of continuity that is a unique part of our personal narrative and identity.

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• But what about the language those ancestors spoke? Is that an important part of the picture, as well? And does it need to be kept "alive" in the same sense that we want their stories remembered and retold?

http://ww

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hen-a-language-dies/29886/

http://esl-bits.net/listening/Media/LanguageDies/language-extinction-hotspot.jpg

• Pamela Serota Cote, whose doctoral research at the University of San Francisco focused on Breton language and identity, argues that looking at language as only a practical tool or as an outside connoisseur, as McWhorter does, misses the central importance of language to personal narrative and identity.  

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/11/whats-lost-when-a-language-dies/29886/

Expert/critic

• "We understand things, events, ourselves and others through a process of interpretation, which occurs in language," 

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/11/whats-lost-when-a-language-dies/29886/

The loss of heritage

• Because language discloses cultural and historical meaning, the loss of language is a loss of that link to the past. Without a link to the past, people in a culture lose a sense of place, purpose and path; one must know where one came from to know where one is going.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/11/whats-lost-when-a-language-dies/29886/

• The loss of language undermines a people's sense of identity and belonging, which uproots the entire community in the end. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/11/whats-lost-when-a-language-dies/29886/

To weaken or destroy

To pull out/ to remove/ to destroy

• Sometimes language dies because an entire population dies out. That's still a loss, just as every plant and animal that becomes extinct is a loss to the richness of the planet's tapestry of existence.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/11/whats-lost-when-a-language-dies/29886/

http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2010/02/last-speaker-of-ancient-language-of-bo-dies-in-india/

• But in cases where the language wanes not because of physical extinction, but because of cultural subsumption, the loss of a language is a far more personal tragedy ... at least to those within that culture. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/11/whats-lost-when-a-language-dies/29886/

To decrease in strength

Died out

To include/ to become part of a more comprehensive one

• For someone inside a lost or dying culture, a language can be like the memories of our grandparents--not required, or even convenient, for efficiency of operation in a modern, globalized world, but essential for our sense of roots, security, identity, pride, continuity and wholeness. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/11/whats-lost-when-a-language-dies/29886/

• "If we are not cautious about the way English is progressing it may eventually kill most other languages."

 French linguist Claude Hagege

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8311000/8311069.stm

http://effiehsiao.pixnet.net/album/video/33616356

• "What we lose is essentially an enormous cultural heritage, the way of expressing the relationship with nature, with the world, between themselves in the framework of their families, their kin people," says Mr Hagege.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8311000/8311069.stm

• For linguists like Claude Hagege, languages are not simply a collection of words. They are living, breathing organisms holding the connections and associations that define a culture. When a language becomes extinct, the culture in which it lived is lost too.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8311000/8311069.stm

http://meetville.com/quotes/tag/world/page498

http://www.11points.com/images/painfullyobvious/lostlanguage.jpg

http://meetville.com/images/quotes/Quotation-Ariel-Sabar-life-language-time-Meetville-Quotes-36210.jpg