ISSUE13 [REBORN FROM THE ASHES] TASK ONE by qxn_1987

qxn_1987UID: 2610437

I generally agree with the speaker’s assertion that the government of countries in which lesser-known languages are spoken should act moderately to protect such languages from being extinct. However, there are some potential problems related to the speaker’s assertion to some extent.

First, those languages which are being lost do not have so much practical value as universal languages, such as English and Chinese. They are different from those popular languages, which can increase the accretion of gobla’s economy, accelerate the advancement of science, or strengthen the communication in culture among different countries, because there are so few people using them. For instance, nowadays a great amount of schools in different countries offer English classes, which is a usefull class, so as to broaden the students’ perspective, allow them to have a better chance to receive better education and communicate with students in other countries more freely, then make them learn more knowledge, or even bring them a brighter future. And all those experience and knowledge may cannot be obtained though offering lesser-known languages calsses.

Second, protecting lesser-known languages from being extinct is a neither proper nor necessary role of government. Even though it is necessary to prevent those languages from being extinct, the government may not be a better chance in contrast with individual, who may paly a better role in saving the languages might by speaking and using those languages more frequently. What’s more, if the process of keeping these lesser-known languages from being extinct carries a great amount of resourses, such as money or energy, it would be better to use these source to address socity’s more immediate problems, such as hungry, poverty, violence, unemployment, and so on. For instance, if a country is full of serious enduring problems of hungry and poverty, it would be better to use those resources which the government has planed to use to save their native language to addressing pressing social problems, after all, saving mother language pales in importance compared to providing food, clothing, and shelter to their people to keep them alive.

On the other hand, the government should make sure that their nation is not homogenized, as well as keep the independent of it. Language to a country is like indivaduality to a person. So the government should take some practical, viable and reasonable measures with the promise of no great expense to some extent to save their native language, in order to keep the independence and characteristics of its nation. For example, the government may offer a foreign language class as well as a native language class to make sure that their youths won’t forget their own language while learning new language. Another means might be propaganda, which may evoke patriotism of people and the consciousness of nationalism, then may make people use and speak their own language more frequently and willingly, and eventually might save their mother language.

In conclusion, I fundamentally agree with the speaker’s assertion that government should protect the lesser-known languages from being extinct, however, the speaker begs the question to some extent. Some practical and applicable measures might be taken by government to saving their mother language which is the characteristics of a nation, while carrying no great expense.