issue13 语言保护 互拍互拍

天晴了UID??201592

iisue13 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.


Considering of the statement above, I concede that the government should, to some degree, act to prevent such languages from being extinct for the reason that those languages can bring a national or cultural identity which is precious for the local. But with respect to the globalization externally and language evolution internally, the extinction is unavoidable. Thus the great effort for protection may be not that worthy.

Firstly, quite a few kinds of globalizations including language homogenization shorten the distance between different countries and regions, which brings convenience and efficiency to people all over the area. For example, European union consisted by 15 nations with their own currencies arriving at one single type. Successively, other homogenizations on languages, ceremonies and even some policies may also follow by. With days passing by, we can feel the increasingly strong ties between those nations, which render them act as a powerful entity. Fortunately, this trend of comprehensively cooperation, though urging language diversity to disappear, benefits European people a lot. In order to meet the requirements of intensively communication, governments should not set barriers for using common language despite their own languages may be at the danger of dying out.

Secondly, the extinction of some kinds of languages results from their own deficiencies, thus according to the theory of “natural selection” in the realm of language similar to the domain of ecology, we can conclude that there is no need for government to spend too much time and energy to save them for it is an useless effort against the language evolution itself. In the remote mountainous areas of China can we find the Kejia villages with Kejia villagers whose language Kejia dialect is. With the complicated structures and the confused pronunciations, the intrinsic function of Kejia dialect can not be fulfilled in modern society for it will take a lot of time for outsiders to understand, let along use it to communicate with Kejia people. With fewer and fewer people using it, this dialect is on the brink of extinction now. When it comes to whether government should act to preserve it, several questions should be answered in advance: Is it an advanced language tool or it has already been outdated? How much value can we obtain from the language? Does it promote or block the cultural development? After a close scrutiny can we draw that government should not waste much resource to set obstacle for the reasonable trend.

Admittedly, since language possesses some value for providing people cultural identity, which may be of no practical merit, but it does have some meanings on psychological level.  We can explain why French Canadian objected to transfer their native official language—French to English in Quebec. French emigrants can feel their identity through reading and writing, through hearing and tasting their own languages, so can other people with their own language, even though the population size is pretty small. As a result, for government, totally abandon the preservation of endangered language may damage native people their nation or culture identity.

In sum, how to treat the controversy on whether to preserve those languages calls for a moderate attitude to direct government’s action. As far as I am concerned, government should not excessively intervene into the global trend and the language evolution itself, but some small-scale preservation that focuses on the cultural piths of those languages can be conducted within the circle of researchers or linguists.

[ Last edited by 天晴了 on 2005-9-12 at 11:23 ]