0910G【Try Best】第二小组 issue13 by tianshi02

tianshi02UID: 2362794

Many human languages are known to have become extinct and many are becoming extinct. People may be tempted to agree with the speaker that governments should prevent the extinction of the languages spoken in their countries. My point of contention is that the governments certainly have to make efforts to prevent such loss of cultural identity, but sometimes it is not worthwhile to waste the endeavor on protecting an endangered language.

First, the fundamental job of the government is to meet people’s needs. The people’s demand to have a distinct cultural identity may not be less strong than the desire to have food, shelters and jobs. Obviously, people in any indigenous group or society want to have their own sense of cultural identity. Language is no doubt one of the aspects that make the culture distinct from any others. I can recall that in the late 18th century, the Spanish king sent some generals to the island of Puerto Rico – one of Spanish colonies, the local white people who could speak Spanish spoke local language to the generals. One might be curious that being mostly first-generation or second-generation immigrants, why were they reluctant to speak Spanish? The indigenous language gave them a strong sense of pride and affinity to the local culture and society. Such examples are ubiquitous. In China, everybody speaks mandarin, but people from the same region meet, they prefer to speak their own dialects that are not recognizable by most people. In all, the government is supposed to work on maintaining the cultural identity for any region within the country.

By protecting an endangered language from extinction, not only does the government retain a valuable cultural identity,but it helps safeguard the wealth of entire human beings. The job of cultural anthropologist is to travel around the world studying the existing ancient culture, in order to obtain insight to reveal the truth about prehistoric time.They quite often learn the language of a tribe first before studying more behaviors in this society. The method provides broad insight on how human beings have evolved and have adapted to the nature, which can’t possibly be revealed by traditional archaeologists. The knowledge on the origin of humanbeings and human lives in prehistoric time belongs to all humans and the governments should have the responsibility to maintain a culture intact so as not to lose any piece of potentially useful information.

Admittedly, the cost of losing an existinghuman language is enormous. However, it’s sometimes almost impossible to preserve one. With the civilized societies dominating almost every corner ofthe world, the premature societies are diminishing and end up with demise. It’svery hard to preserve a language in such societies. In addition, the languagesof the civilized minorities are not effortless to preserve. Their very survivalcalls for cross-cultural communication, which will break the language barrier.It can easily come to a point where their own language is of no profit for them, and thus the language is likely to be abandoned. When a language is of no use, especially commercial one, it tends to be superseded by one that is beneficial. People are pragmatic, and this is human nature, something government can’t figure out a way to effectively control. After all, the government has to combat more pressing social problems, such as hunger,homelessness, disease and so on. Maybe the great natural scientist Darwin is also right in social science - the extinction of a language is an irreversible yet inevitable process, during which the selection gets rid of the languages with little social value.

All in all, due to the valuable role of a language in culture, the government shouldtake effective measures to preserve the dying languages. This is not to saythat the government has to spare no efforts to save all endangered languages.After all, some languages are destined to demise, in which case the government needn’t waste the limited resources on them.

许浩杰UID: 2644623

1# tianshi02
Many human languages are known to have become extinct and many are becoming extinct. People may be tempted to agree with the speaker that governments should prevent the extinction of the languages spoken in their countries. My point of contention is that the governments certainly have to make efforts to prevent such loss of cultural identity, but sometimes it is not worthwhile to waste the （most，呼应你的下文） endeavor on protecting an endangered language.

First, the fundamental job of the government is to meet people’s needs. The people’s demand to have a distinct cultural identity may not be less strong than the desire to have food, shelters and jobs. Obviously, people in any indigenous group or society want to have their own sense of cultural identity. Language is no doubt one of the aspects that make the culture distinct from any others. I can recall that in the late 18th century, the Spanish king sent some generals to the island of Puerto Rico – one of Spanish colonies, the local white people who could speak Spanish spoke local language to the generals. One might be curious that being mostly first-generation or second-generation immigrants, why were they reluctant to speak Spanish? The indigenous language gave them a strong sense of pride and affinity to the local culture and society. Such examples are ubiquitous. In China, everybody speaks mandarin, but people from the same region meet, they prefer to speak their own dialects that are not recognizable by most people. In all, the government is supposed to work on maintaining the cultural identity for any region within the country.

By protecting an endangered language from extinction, not only does the government retain a valuable cultural identity,but it helps safeguard the wealth of entire human beings. The job of cultural anthropologist is to travel around the world studying the existing ancient culture, in order to obtain insight to reveal the truth about prehistoric time.They quite often learn the language of a tribe first before studying more behaviors in this society. The method provides broad insight on how human beings have evolved and have adapted to the nature, which can’t possibly be revealed by traditional archaeologists. The knowledge on the origin of humanbeings and human lives in prehistoric time belongs to all humans and the governments should have the responsibility to maintain a culture intact so as not to lose any piece of potentially useful information.

Admittedly, the cost of losing an existinghuman language is enormous. However, it’s sometimes almost impossible to preserve one. With the civilized societies dominating almost every corner ofthe world, the premature societies are diminishing and end up with demise. It’svery hard to preserve a language in such societies. In addition, the languagesof the civilized minorities are not effortless to preserve. Their very survivalcalls for cross-cultural communication, which will break the language barrier.It can easily come to a point where their own language is of no profit for them, and thus the language is likely to be abandoned. When a language is of no use(not so useful), especially commercial one(for commercial concren), it tends to be superseded by one that is beneficial. People are pragmatic, and this is human nature, something government can’t figure out a way to effectively control（it is not doubt that goverment cannot control everything effectively）. After all, the government has to combat more pressing social problems, such as hunger,homelessness, disease and so on. Maybe the great natural scientist Darwin is also right in social science - the extinction of a language is an irreversible yet inevitable process, during which the selection gets rid of the languages with little social value.

All in all, due to the valuable role of a language in culture, the government shouldtake effective measures to preserve the dying languages. This is not to saythat the government has to spare no efforts to save all endangered languages.After all, some languages are destined to demise, in which case the government needn’t waste the limited resources on them. (不能说有些语言注定要灭亡的，我觉得更好说是，政府只要尽人事，听天命这样就更好的呼应了你的“去努力去保护，但不需要投入全部精力”)

整体写得不错，如果有例证的话，一方面增强说服力，一方面增加字数（最好是550+），就很好了

分数：4