Call me callous, or whatever, but is language extinction really bad? According to David Crystal of “Language Death”, a language is already dead if it is not used for communication between members of a group. Now in his definition a group can consist of only two people, however I believe that a language in order to be useful must allow you to communicate with the majority of the people around you. This is not the case for most languages, so I don’t really see that the extinction of a useless language is really all that bad. I can understand the argument for diversity, but unless you have people willing to learn the language and practice it, it is a moot point. I mean, would you be willing to learn all these soon-to-be-extinct languages for the sake of not letting them go extinct? I wouldn’t, who has the time? Especially when English and Spanish let me go pretty much anywhere in the Americas and get business done.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for archiving these languages and keeping them on file. I believe that analyzing these languages and the cultures that went with them would help us understand ourselves better but for practical day-to-day business that are not useful.

Putting aside the ’sentimental value’ of a culture’s language, how important is it that they are preserved? It seems that if all the people on Earth spoke one language then perhaps some of the barriers that prevent us from realising we are all part of the same species would dissolve. Which may be true, but I doubt it is entirely achievable; the two best-known English-speaking nations have significant differences in their application of the language. If you ask for a fag in England you’ll get a cigarette; in the U.S. the word has a very different meaning; and don’t even get me started on the proper spelling of aluminium:). The U.K. is actually a pretty small island yet there are still a large number of subtle regional variations on the ‘mother tongue’ waiting to trip the unwary, most with their own accents to further confuse the issue. It seems that a language is adaptable to better suits the local needs of the community using it. These are however, only minor differences that could be overcome should an ‘official’ Earthian language be adopted, particularly with the internet and air travel making it possible to mingle with minds the whole world over. So what’s the downside? Well, perhaps the grammatical rules and ideas represented by the vocabulary of the language we are brought up speaking affect the way our minds work. The concepts it is possible to express in Russian, and the way that they are expressed, may allow certain thought processes to naturally occur that would not so readily come to the mind of a Frenchman, and vice versa. Perhaps therefore it is a good idea to retain some of our differences in order to allow different approaches to solving common problems to flourish. If we ever become Team Humanity the more variety and flexibility the human think tanks have, the better. There is also the intellectual excerise afforded by learning another language and being forced to think in a different way; as well as the reminder doing so presents us with that the way we were raised is not necessarily the only, or even the best, way of doing things – a useful lesson that can be applied elsewhere in life. Finally, there is one more reason to treasure diversity: it makes the world a more interesting place in which to live.

I would like to speak to your thoughts of not understanding how a loss of language can mean a loss of culture and as such is “unproven”. I can only speak to the Native American languages (but I am sure it applies to most of them).

Native American ceremony is based 100% on being able to speak the language – take for instance Lakota. One can not perform any of the Lakota Seven Sacred Rites Ceremonies (Sundance, Sweat Lodge, Vision Quest, etc) if one can not speak the language and sing the ceremonial songs in Native tounge. Thus – if the language is lost so is their ceremony. (Just think of it this way – if Jewish people could not speak in their tounge could they perform their ceremonies in the traditonal way? No.)

In many languages, including Native Languages, there are many words that are not found in English. And there are many english words that are not represented in their language. Again using Lakota as an example – the words themselves are not just words, they are made up of meaning…for example their sacred Pipe “Canupa” – when the word is broken down it literally means stone, wood, male female.

So just because you may speak one of the primary languages such as english. Do not be too quick to dismiss the importance of others cultures/traditions until you understand them. You may want to learn a bit from a Native Language and speak to the people there to understand before you simply condem them to extinction.

Mitakuye Oyasin (we are all related)!

How narrow a view you have.

What if it were english that was disappearing – you couldn’t sing happy birthday, star spangled banner, read/write a poem, the declaration of independance!

What if you were Jewish and could not come into manhood through the sacred barmitzma (I’m sure I spelled that wrong – sorry).

What if you were Buddhist and could not perform a Puja to activate a mantra to meditate.

What if you were Lakota/Dakota and could not purify in a sweat lodge or hold a sundance (where they believe is the sacred center that helps the people to live – all the people!)

These are just a few of the ceremonies that are performed in a Native language. Without the language there is NO ceremony. It can not be translated to english – as then it would not be the sacred ceremony. In some languages the sounds have meaning beyond what you would ever put into english – there are simply no words for them – yet they serve a distinct purpose for that culture.

Please do not condem others because of your lack of understanding for the importance of someone elses rights. If that is what it takes for an indigenous person to be proud and a productive member of society – I say lets go out of our way to support them! Just look at our own Native American society – segregation and punishment/disallowment of them speaking their language or performing there ceremonies – not allowing them to be who they are has created an entire generation of lost beings, many who do not care and don’t think they matter as a human! Well their children are not standing for that and are struggling to regain their sense of culture and who they truly are in their blood. Let us support them fully. Let us not judge them for something we obviously know little about.

Speak to an Elder and understand why language, culture, tradition is so important to the people who have fought their entire lives and for many generations loosing their lives to be who they are – when people like you don’t think its “important” or “practicle in todays world”. Let us take away your right to pray or do your ceremonies and see how important you think it is then.

In peace and Unity.
A friend

I did not express myself clearly enough, so I will clarify. Most people will agree that losing cultures is not a good thing, and the authors of Vanishing Voices do a good job of explaining why that is so. It is at this point, however, that their logic stops making sense.

Rather than pressing the case for preserving the world’s vanishing cultures, they focus on preserving the vanishing languages. Their argument being that the effort required to preserve the language would have the side-effect of preserving the culture.

I found this entire argument to be backwards. Losing the language is a symptom of losing the culture. The real issue is the loss of cultural diversity, but the authors of Vanishing Voices decided to focus on a corollary problem.

If the problem is the loss of culture, why not focus on that? Why not call the subtitle “the extinction of the world’s ‘cultures’” instead of ‘languages’?

This is a really good point, and it is not one that was explained very well by the authors of Vanshing Voices. It was only in discussing the topic with a multi-lingual friend that I found out how languages make it easier or difficult to think differently.

Certainly a concept can be expressed in nearly any language, but it may be difficult because the concept is contrary to the patterns established in the brain.

I believe this is one of the few valid arguments on the need to maintain linguistic diversity.

You are posting some wonderful comments! Please join and get a username so I can tell when you post again :-)

BTW in your English list “sing happy birthday, star spangled banner, read/write a poem, the declaration of independance!” I would add “enjoy Shakespeare!” That’s one of the great joys of being a native English speaker.

IMHO it’s not a question of good or bad.
First, you have to concede that language extinction has been going on for ages, and is, to some extent an inevitability.
However, you also have to agree that with the advanced availability of the three "world languages" (English, French, and Mandarin Chinese), it is occurring at an accelerated rate.  It may be impossible to stop, HOWEVER, a few things should be done.
1. We should encourage and fund the best of our linguists to go into these remote places and to record, as well as they can, the dying languages of the world.
2. Their findings should be made publicly available free of charge; the temptation to charge $500 to the nouveau riche for the novelty of learning an extinct language is an insult and both cheapens and limits the usefulness of the information to those who wish to study it seriously.
3. For those languages that are not on the verge of extinction but endangered nonetheless, we should not only allow but encourage their use, even going so far in some instances as translaing our books and films.

Thus far these things are being done to some extent by individuals and independent studies; however there is no concerted effort as yet to do these things.  

Preserving some element of a language is vital to understanding both the culture that created it and learning more about the provenance of human language as a whole.  If it is our society that is partly responsible, and we are aware of this, we should do something to at least make sure that those languages that do die aren’t lost without a trace.