Kuzmenko Elena AE5 06.08.2012

Is enough being done to preserve languages?

Throughout history the world has consisted of many cultures and languages, some of them have been dominant, some of them have been minor. Until the 20th century global and minority languages have continued a peaceful coexistence that has provided cultural diversity for the Earth. In the present this balance has been broken and most of indigenous languages tend to disappear. Although worldwide scientists do not spare efforts to stop this extinction, there is a debate whether it is sufficient to do for saving extinct languages or not. Some experts suggest that some positive trends have emerged in linguistic field which can alleviate the …show more content…

Respectively, most scientists are concerned about the alarming situation and its development in the future. Nevertheless, common people, especially native speakers, often have inferior attitude towards their own language. This attitude is another cause of disappearing minor languages. Owing to learning a dominate language and forgetting own language, people hope to improve their standard of living and be equal to their surroundings. This case happened to some dialects in Scottish which have given way to common English language (Wayt-Gibbs, 2002). It is obvious that an individual does not understand why he or she has to save own language when it is not useful for everyday life. Thus, the world has lost its language diversity with the exponential rate, as indigenous communities have rejected using its own language in favor of global languages in order to have better opportunities for themselves and their children.

Therefore, although some encouraging perspectives have recently appeared in linguistic fields to prevent minority languages from dying out, the process of language extinction is irreversible. Most of the evidence was presented above particularly from developed countries such as the US and Australia. Nonetheless, developing countries have also lost its indigenous languages. According to Wayt-Gibbs (2002), there are aboriginal languages in Brazil, Ivory Coast, East Timor which it is