Wednesday, January 18, 2017

The Value of Indigenous Languages


According to the article studied in class Speaking In Tongues written by James Geary in 1997 published by Times magazine; "languages like all living things, depend on their environment to survive". Reading sentences as such as makes us look at dying languages to be almost as similar as endangered animals in the nature. One example of languages that are disappearing are indigenous languages that can be found in areas such as Australia or North America. 


It is often times forgotten the value of preserving indigenous language. Preserving a language means you are preserving it's culture and knowledge as well as the identity of all those that spoke it. There are whole generations and traditions being lost once and for all, fading into oblivion. Language is not just word it is a whole mindset and philosophies and each language has it's mind of it's own, for example aboriginal languages are richer with vocabulary used to describe nature and is also abundant of myths and stories . Losing individual languages is like losing animals in an ecosystem, making the ecosystem  lack in variety. 

The fact that the english language has become so popular that many people do not feel the need to learn their mother tongue is alarming, as it means that we not only adopting and basing ourselves only on a foreign language but it also means we are giving up a part of our identity for another one rather than letting both identities coexist. Once the language is stripped off from a community, it means that the community will soon fade, as they do no longer that bond that kept them together, language which is the core element for communication. 

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