ISSUE13 [REBORN FROM THE ASHES] TASK ONE by kiki~

KiKi~淇水滺滺UID: 2679824

Issue 13



Language is what people used to communicate with each other by using signs, sounds, gestures or marks having understood meanings and it is of great importance. With the world becoming more and more globalized, many languages almost disappeared as fewer and fewer people spoke them. Many other things such as culture, opera are also disappearing now just like languages. Government, as the most important aspect to protect them, has many ways to do that.

The culture diversity is a treasure to our human beings, while the language diversity is just as the most beautiful diamond in it. Language is a very important part to the culture related to it as its base. Stories, fairy tales, poems, opera….all of them are handed down and spread by languages. Writing down things is a way we can do to preserve our history, but what we did before we could write? The only way is to recount it as sagas—legends handed down from one generation of story tellers to another. Languages also reflect the way a people think and understand the outside world. Because of languages, people can share ideas and experiences, know what happened even they didn’t see, talk with people long ago in the books.

However, the current situation of languages is not optimistic. Half of the 6,000 languages spoken today are in danger of disappearing before the 20th century ends; a report even shows that 90% of all the languages will be disappeared in 2050 if we do nothing to rescue them. 97% of people speak only 4% of all languages, half of all languages are spoken by no more than 10,000 people, 1/4 of all languages are spoken by no more than 1,000. Facing these facts and numbers, we must rescue them rather than just protect them.

There are many other things are just the same as languages, such as species diversity, culture diversity。In the process of industrial expansion, more and more species disappeared. There are about 100 species disappeared in the world everyday now. 12% of all the birds, almost one fourth of all the mammals and one third of all the amphibians are going to disappear all over the world. Once these species are all disappeared, our human beings would also not be able to survive in this beautiful planet. As for the culture diversity, lesser and lesser of people care about the less-known culture. In China, only a few old people like listening to the opera now. Since the spread of the Internet, people care less about the poems, classic literature and classic music.

Government can do a lot to protect them from encountering these situations. Teaching two languages in the class is a way to preserve the less-known one. Government can also open up a series of programs to make the languages more internationalized. Using media, building museums about all of the languages, performing in the theatre using the less-known languages are the good ways to protect the language diversity. A very good way to protect them is combine them with popular culture. In this way, the young generation can accept them easily.

More and more languages are disappearing now and it’s a hard task to protect them. Government of course plays an important role in protecting them, but everyone in the society should also makes a contribution to rescuing them.