RSS
Home
Endangered language doesn’t die away
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
What say you?
Education is enriched by language, whether it is spoken, written, or signed. According to the web site Ethnologue , over 500 global languages are nearly extinct. Languages become extinct when natives are prohibited from speaking or writing them because of the proximity of more dominant languages, when parents don’t speak the endangered language to their children, and when only the elderly continue to engage conversationally in their native tongue. Hebrew, Latin, and Hawaiian are examples of endangered language (indeed except for religious and literary references, Latin is sometimes referred to as a dead language).
Why should we care about endangered language? Isn’t language extinction a natural evolution as cultures grow and change? Actually, huge educational opportunities can be lost with along with the endangered language. As an English teacher, I rely on transcribed and translated versions of Native American language to teach origin and creation myth in American literature. The famed Navajo Night chant, dating back to 1000 b.c., is still enacted for healing purposes. It would be lost without language preservation, particularly of a largely oral culture.
Fortunately, scholars, and The Foundation for Endangered Languages, work hard to preserve the oral and written traditions of endangered language. A software company, Rosetta Stone, also conducts an endangered language program, particularly in Canada, where the Mohawk native communities are losing their native tongue. Rosetta Stone,distinguished from other online language programs by its total immersion aspect (see Nov. 22nd article: Learn how language really works) has created software versions, written
and spoken, in forms unique to their language. The company has also founded a group of scholars who believe they have reproduced the sound of classical Latin through poetry.
The preservation of obscure languages greatly enhances how much we can learn about history, culture, and how humans, from all times and places, really think.
