Tuesday, April 30, 2013


Language Loss

Many years ago the different Empires’ consolidation took place; among these there were two big Empires that spread their legacy around the world. The Spanish Empire took over territories and populations which inhabited the subcontinent known as South America, whereas the British Empire (European continent) strategically conquered many places in Africa, Asia and even North America, today known as the United States.
                                    

Clearly the winners by making these emancipatory trips were the Empires previously mentioned, and if so, how is that in some places people barely resisted their arrival? Well, they have been projecting an imaginary reality to aborigines, stating that this colonization was and is necessary for them, and assuring them that they will join the peaceful world we live in and will be fairly treated. Anyway I don’t think they believe in those words anymore.
Despite I already knew a little of these events I had never wonder about the situation they face nowadays.

There is a theory that remains the existence of six thousand spoken languages but half of the world's known languages are expected to die within this century mainly because some of these languages have just a single living speaker or they are spoken only by elders and not learned by children. As an example we can consider the case of Rapa Nui language, they were not used to teach their children the native language at school but this has been changing through the years. American and African countries went through this situation but they realized how important it was to keep their roots alive.

Talking about Chile, only four out of the eight natives languages ​​are spoken by less than one third of the adult population. On twenty-ninth February we celebrate the international day of the mother tongue. But most of us do not know about it. The government has implemented certain recovery and integration programs but is this enough? Do they really want to comply with what native people are asking, which are more opportunities and above all never forget where we come from?

      
                           “Globalization: another factor that contributes to cultural diversity loss”

Here I post a video where a specialist mentions a really important possibly consequence: the loss of diversity, and some quotes that in my opinion express deep reflections, certainly worth it to hear and read.

“Language loss has a profound impact on indigenous and minority communities and revitalization and maintenance efforts by concerned people can make a big difference in the way the community values not only its language but, even more, its entire culture.
Preservation [...] is what we do to berries in jam jars and salmon in cans. [...] Books and recordings can preserve languages, but only people and communities can keep them alive.” -- Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer, Tlingit [Alaska] oral historians. (In Lord 1996: 68).



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