ISSUE13 [REBORN FROM THE ASHES] TASK ONE by Fancy

fancywwUID: 2583671

大半年没写过issue了，第一篇煎熬了一个上午。请大家多指点，我接下来也会去阅读大家的习作的。^_^




ISSUE13
Many of the world's lesser-known languages are being lost as fewer and fewer people speak them. The governments of countries in which these languages are spoken should act to prevent such languages from becoming extinct.

During the process of colonialism and globalization, some inferior languages are overwhelmed by dominant languages like English, and become endangered or even vanish. Some people maintains this phenomenon as natural, or even claim that fewer languages means better communication. However, such endangered languages actually carry unique cultural heritage, and their governments should take actions.

Every language has the value and reason to exist, because it carries distinctive human culture. Every group of people has adapted to unique circumstances,and their language expresses those circumstances. What we talk about, think, and believe is closely bound up with the words we have. So it is not exaggerated to say that the history of a culture can be mapped in its language. For example, the Russian word "mir" has three discrete meanings today:"commune, world, peace". There was a point in Russian history when most of the population lived in communes all their lives so that a commune was a Russian's world so long as they were at peace. If more and more languages become endangered, millions of unique cultural stories like this are at risk; the history tied up in a language will go unrecorded; the poetry and rhythm of a singular tongue will be silenced forever. While a language dies, the culture heritage will disappear, and the community which uses the language may lose its identity, which uproots the entire community in the end.

Since different languages express human's distinctive ways of perceiving the world, they can provide the linguistics and philosophers with valuable resources to study human minds and thoughts. Let's take the study of universal grammar as an example. The scientific search for the common starting point for all grammars that human children seem to be born with, depends on our knowing what all human languages have in common. The large number loss of languages that we face today will greatly restrict how much we can learn about human cognition, language, and language acquisition. That means people from other cultures are also impoverished when any language dies.

Still, some may argue that the extinction of all but a few major languages is inexorable; and the governments should consider the cost the do so. Admittedly, in the past, many languages vanished, because its speakers died out in natural disasters, wars, or diseases. This is a natural trend and their governments disappeared with them. We can do nothing about that. However, nowadays most languages die for the culture mesh and invasion. In this case, comparing the lose of language distinction with the efforts taken to save the language, any sightful government can do the math. Besides, even though some linguistics and organizations are now starting to study and preserve the endangered languages, their ability is limited and such undertaking requires the involvement of the government.  

When an endangered animal goes extinct, the world loses a unique part of our global ecosystem. When an endangered language dies, we lose cultural identities and the richness and diversity of humanity's culture heritage. It is not only affect the native speakers, but also endanger the whole human beings. The government facing such dilemma has the obligation to take actions.