Endangered Languages Essay

addresss that be threaten with the issue of natural generational transmission argon referred to as exist vocabularys. Language endangerment generally occurs in the later stages of talk voice communication shift, that is, when a patois association moves off from their earlier variety, dialect, or manner of speaking to a new one and only(a) or new set thereof (Fishman, 1991). firearm the functioninges of endangerment and extinction flummox likely been constant throughout the history of human talkion, the scale and the footstep of this goingwhose cumulative effect is the reduction of linguistic diversityin the modern era appears to be alone(predicate)ly intense, with up to half or more of the currently estimated 5,0006,000 phrases spoken today expected to be doomed in spite of appearance a century or so (Hale et al. , 1992). both the reputation of this waiver and its consequences are complex and involve deep psychosocial factors as a good deal as purely linguis tic ones.Two common reactions to language endangerment admit language revitalisation and linguistic accountation, deuce of which generate extensive challenges and opportunities for utilize linguistics. The sources of language endangerment are non uniform, exactly do generally present recurrent themes on both the broader external social/political/ economic and the narrower association-internal and individual scales, corresponding in broad strokes to what Grenoble and Whaley (1998) refer to as macro- and micro-factors.From the macro-factor perspective, language shift feces occur from sheer population wrong of a speech community, delinquent to war, disease, famine, or kind of commonly, economically motivated outmigration, that is, scattering into a diaspora that makes daily use of a given language no longer practical or meaningful/effective. Demographically stable communities, however, date language endangerment just as readily when they are induced to shift for separate reasons.Loss of prestige is a real common factor It after part be introduced through schooling, often reinforced by physical or social/emotional punishment of young speakers, or simply as a social contempt expressed in adult caller by speakers of the dominant to the minority. As dominant languages are typically those spoken by the socioeconomically dominant, language shift is very often rationalizedboth on the part of the speech community itself, or by outsidersvia ideological narratives of economic practicality, or homogeneous national identity.Hence, while there are exceptions, language endangerment is most typically experienced by minority and socioeconomically marginalized populations. In addition to psychological internalization of the above factors, the internal or microfactor side of language loss has as a primary portion the local disruption of the social spaces in which the language has normally been utilize, and the shrivel up of the range of much(prenominal) space s. As most endangered languages give birth a primarily oral tradition (or no written tradition at all), full acquisition and rich ? uency depends entirely on personal experience with other speakers.Reduction of the range of domains in which an individual can be exposed to the language commonly results in a feedback effect otherwise ? uent speakers who have knowledge or performance gaps are judged as imperfectible speakers by more broadly experienced speakers (typically though non simply elders), leading the source to avoid situations of language use even out more, and so intensify the process of contraction. As the factors affecting transmission are very ? uid, languages can shift from stable to endangered extremely quickly, often within the space of one generation.For the same reason, endangerment is often not large even as it happens, as since three coexisting generations of grandparent, parent, and child can signify fuck ? uency, intermediate competence, and complete no n-speaker status. One still-living full generation of ? uent speakers can and often does give the illusion that the language is not seriously threatened even more so if the majority of the community are uncertain or antipathetic with regard to maintaining the language. Language loss is not uniform, either.During the process of language shift, competence in the language can range from dissimilar degrees of ? ency, to remembered speaker (full ? uency from childhood but fallen into disuse), to rusty speaker (substantial but limited competence due to an early shift from the threatened language to another), to semi-speaker (characterized by imperfect acquisition of the complete earlier form of the language, due to limited exposure) (Sasse, 1992). From this can also emerge young peoples languages complete but markedly distinct variants of the source language used by younger generations that have been substantially altered by these sorts of uncompleted transmission processes (Schmidt, 1 985).Even after a speech community is decreased beyond even one notional native speaker, a language or features thereof can persist in more or less full lexicogrammatical form as a liturgical or literary language, or both (as in the case of Hebrew, Latin, and Classical Greek, among others), or as a set of rote-memorized honoring phraseology, or as features in? uencing the variety of the replacing language(s) now spoken by descendants of the former speech community. The lexical, phonological, and syntactic in? ence of Irish Gaelic on varieties of side of meat now spoken monolingually in Ireland is a oft generation cited example. semantic and pragmatic features of the earlier language too may cross over. abstruse languages may also persist after a community has shifted away from an professional contributory language. Michif and Media Lenguaresults of contact between French and Cree, and Spanish and Quechua, one by onefor example, have replaced the indigenous source language in so me communities such mixed languages can and do also exist alongside populations keep to speak their source languages.Complete language loss itself can be problematicized. The notion of dormant or sleeping language has been developed for languages that have experienced complete disruption of natural generation-to-generation transmission, but that persist in substantial enough recorded form to permit the possibility of revitalisation as a useable linguistic instrument (Leonard, 2007).Wampanoag and Miami represent two (Algonquian) languages currently being agilely revived by descendants of the original speech communities, to the extent that children are being raised with the revived language as one of their ? st languages. Israeli Hebrew is perhaps the most famous case of a sleeping language subsequently revived as a full-? edged daily use language. Zuckerman (2009) and Leonard (2007) offer thorough discussions of the descent between such revived languages and their source(s), esp ecially the ? rst languages of their revivers. Finally, the application of the terms endangered and extinct have both been called into question as inherently stigmatizing and, particularly when the latter is applied to dormant languages, inaccurate, and disenfranchising (Rinehart, 2006).The current intensity of language loss can be attributed both to essentially technological factors such as increased mobility (physical, social, and economic), telecommunications, popular media, education, and also to ideological and political factors such as the spread of the notionally homogeneous nation-state and cultural imperialisms of various kinds. Language endangerment is thus potently connected to other types of sociocultural dislocation. With the loss of a given language also ripple out a host of ancillary losses.While loss of traditional language need not entail complete loss of traditional culture, language loss is more often than not accompanied by loss of bodies of knowledge traditiona lly passed on via the language, ranging from the ceremonial/religious, historical, literary/rhetorical, technological, medical, and so on (Harrison, 2007 Evans, 2010) it is often observed that the loss of a language results in the loss of a whole unique worldview implicitly and explicitly encoded in language-speci? c form and usage.For discussion of how language loss affects and re? cts the broader questions of biocultural/intellectual diversity, see Fishman (1982), Maf? (2001), and Dalby (2003), as well as Harrison (2007) and Evans (2010). frequently generational transmission of social norms and values is affected when languages are mazed as is coherent community identity. A traditional language frequently functions as a pervasive and potent marker of membership in this both emotional and intellectual connections to previous/ancestral generations can be rendered much more tenuous with its loss.Sheer grief (and at times even shame) at the loss of a cherished part of personal, fam ilial, and community heritage is a situation-speci? c but very common experience, salient and wrenching to its affectees, even as it can be missed or underplayed by strictly materialistic/utilitarian approaches to the role of language in human life. For linguistics and related cognitive sciences, what is lost is the opportunity to wonder the full diversity of human linguistic authority.This is particularly crucial in the testing of universal claims about possible versus impossible human linguistic administrations. Currently endangered and recently extinct languages have all offered unique contributions to the understanding of human language and by extension, human cognition. Damin, an auxiliary language traditionally used among the Lardil of Wellesley Island, North Queensland, Australia, for example, uses several phonetic mechanisms not arrange in any other known languages (and the only known firedog systems outside of southern Africa).It also exhibits an unparalleled intellect ual creation a carefully semantically abstracted lexicon of approximately 200 elements that can express the full range of the everyday Lardil languages much richer system (Hale, 1998). Many other features of human language which are evidently instead common as possible grammatical options remain under-researched and poorly understand because they are, by historical accident, chie? y only found in languages that are currently endangered/threatened among others, these include polysynthesis, switch reference, and complex important contrasts.At present there are two frequent active responses to language endangerment (i. e. , beyond simple acceptance) language revitalization and language documentation. Both pose interesting challenges for applied linguistics. At the time of this writing, there is an emergent consensus (though see Newman, 1998, for an alternative view) that it is incumbent upon linguists (and policymakers) to support language revitalization, namely, active efforts to recruit and restore an endangered language to active daily use in a speech community (Hinton & Hale, 2001 for introductory handbooks, see Hinton, 2002, and Grenoble & Whaley, 2006).Simultaneously, an effort has emerged to document as many features of endangered languages as possible before their potential or even likely disappearance. Currently several institutions have been found that speci? cally support language documentation (see Online Resources). While language documentation of ancestry can contribute substantially to language revitalization, the priorities of each do not necessarily overlap completely.Since unambiguous examples of thoroughly successful language revitalization efforts are still quite rare, focusing on documentation rather than revitalization can, particularly in academic circles, be seen as a more realistic use of limited resources to address language loss (see Bowern & James, 2010, for a challenge to this view). That said, documentation and revitalization efforts more often than not go hand in hand, particularly because endangered language speech communities typically expect documentation (still most often done by outsiders) to contribute substantially to revitalization efforts.