Issue13 【METTLE小组】 第六次作业 by happyhappypig

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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."

Words:674

When we traveling to certain region for tourism, learning how to greet or say thank you in its local language is one of our first preparations. Without doubt, language is one representative method to know about customs, traditions and history. However, latest study shows that among 6000-7000 existing languages in the world nowadays, half of them would be extinct in the next century. Thus, increasing number of linguistic experts and social organizations ask the government to design language survival campaigns to prevent their extinction. Clearly, government should make a wise decision and invest in these language saving activities.

To begin with, language, as a remembrance of the history, and a unique culture inheritor, deserve our effort to prevent its extinction. Date back to the ancient times, when there are little communication even between the nearby tribes, language are developed independently in different areas, and its emergence reflect people's way of interpretation of nature. For example, certain characters in Chinese evolved from the image of people’s features or behaviors, and give clues of traditional rituals and ceremonies or old habbits. Also, some words in certain languages indicate people's worship to certain animals or deity. Maybe for ordinary people, those are just simple words they use everyday, whereas linguistics and history experts might reveal significant historical meaning out of it. Therefore, to this extent, any language in the world now is unique and charitable, whose extinction would be a tremendous lost for us to understand our ancestors.

Additionally, in most cases, the reasons for a language to die out are mainly losing self-confidence and the shift to a more predominate language, thus the government, who can arouse people's desire to tag their identity should help languages' healthy survival. With the economic and communications globalization and wide spread usage of the Internet and web-connected computers, more and more people turn into more widely used language for convenience such as English. It is true that learning English might provide people more chances or promotions in the job, at the same time, preserve of the local language is equally important. As a matter of fact, government, with the utmost authority and regulation enforces could require using local language as instructing media, set pre-requisite level of local language for working or promote the usage of local language. For instance, in Hong Kong, instructors in primary schools and high schools are using Cantonese in most courses and each school has Mandarin classes with all the courses in the universities taught in English. In this way, the mother language Cantonese is well reserved, and Hong Kong people could speak fluent Mandarin and English, which provide them more opportunities to communicate various customers. It is not exaggerate to say, proper movement of the government could save and even prosper certain languages.

However, the essential role of language is to communicate; if in some cases there are so few people using the language, it might not be able or necessary to save it. If there is only one person knows the language, no matter how fantastic its expressions are or how significant its meanings are, the person cannot share it with others. Without any communication functions, the language lost its vivacity and becomes more or less futile to the world. Even if hundreds of people are using it, people may have to make a lot of effort to think before knowing how to say particular objects or how to describe certain feelings. It is too time consuming to use such languages, and it would costs much financial investment to save and spread the language. If it is the case, the government might not need to take any action.

Taken together, from the analysis above, it may be safe for us to draw a conclusion that languages are crucial to us in the way it helps us understand the history we have gone through and reveals our culture significance. Therefore, it is reasonable for government to help prevent their extinction. The revival of endangered language would exert great impact on our understanding of the passed.