Issue13 【METTLE小组】第六次作业 by Benjamin9

Benjamin9UID: 2306677

13"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."


As the speaker’s claim, the governments should prevent the lesser-know languages which are spoken in their countries from becoming extinct. I fundamentally disagree at the point of view that it is the governments’ business to prevent these languages. However a indigenous language stand for the cultural heritage of the region’s natives.

Firstly, according to the Darwin’s Darwinism, every field follows the principle that survival of the fittest. Therefore, the languages cannot be exception. Why lesser-known languages become lesser-known and why English become well-known, it is the result of nature selection. Lesser-known languages will become extinct inevitably because of their little advantages and many disadvantages. We must consider that why fewer an fewer people speak them. Meanwhile the well-known languages will become more widely since their many advantages. So we cannot conflict to the order of nature, just to follow it. The governments should use the resource to combat more pressing problems such as hunger, homelessness, disease and ignorance that plague nearly every society today, rather than to prevent the lesser-known languages from becoming extinct.

Secondly, in today’s high-tech world, the internationalization is advocated in many fields, for example, the global mobility and the Internet, the language barriers serve primarily to impede the cross-cultural communications, and so it impede the international commerce and trade. Language barriers also incur misunderstanding naturally, a certain distrust, as a result discord and even war among nations. English have been adopted as the official language of the Internet, so the government prevent a dying language might be wasting its resource to fight a losing battle. It is rather to popularize some popular language just like English.

Thirdly, assume preventing dying languages is necessary, we must do something with that, but is it just the governments’ duty, and can the governments’ measure be effective? The answer is no, I believe that rescue a dying language even a dying culture, it needs the societal strength especially the people who speak that kind of language. The governments should apply themselves to solve the more emergent and more competent problems. Such as hunger, violence and  disease.

However, as the biologic field, the human society also needs the variety, so are the languages. Every language in spite of well-known or lesser-known contains a culture which has been accumulated as long as it has existed. And some valuable idea can be conveyed only through the language. Language also include some specially thought and history of the nation. And some lesser-known languages because of its lesser-known, some militarists use them as ciphers. That happened in world war two.

In sum, the governments need not to prevent the dying language, because that is the natural choice, a language becoming extinct is the law of nature, many things are extinct every day, we cannot contravene it. Whereas some valuable idea, thought, and the history of the nation are contained in the language, they can be extinct as the language being extinct. So we can take record of the language for keeping down the treasure of the language.