Analysis Of David Crystal's Article Language Death '

Currently, there are over 6,000 living languages spoken in the world. Even with these many languages spoken, people are still discriminated in America. Language is a part of many cultures and daily life, for example in Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue", Tan says "I've heard other terms used, 'limited English,' for example. But they seem as bad, as if everything is limited, including people's perceptions of the limited English speaker." Language should not be a border where people today are still treated as "broken".

This leads to the idea of the disastrous impacts of “killing” your language. The author discusses this principle as being denied the right to speak within in your country. However, I would like to take this principle one-step farther. Research shows that mastery of other languages demands mastery of the regional language. We see this is apparent in our own Public School system, with English speakers teaching students foreign languages and dialects in the regional language. Thus, in order to shift to a more modernized, globalized world we must start within our own regional culture. Society must understand that mastery of the mother tongue is a prerequisite for creative expression in other languages. (Adichie)

Ken Wiwa presents several ideas pertaining to language and culture within his essay, Get Beyond Babel. Wiwa explains that every language has a chance of dying out over time. For any language to survive through years of societal changes, it must be adapted so it can be used to embrace other cultures, new technology and new perspectives. Wiwa presents the concept that language is the same as culture. I do not agree with this concept because I believe that culture is carried by the people, not by the language.

The loss of languages within minority groups is a global phenomenon. It is an ongoing, fast moving process among indigenous groups in the United States. A vast majority of Native American vernaculars are nowadays only spoken by elders and as a growing numbers of children merely speak English in those modern days, the languages of their ancestors will soon be irretrievably lost as a result of language shift. According to Krauss (1996), only 20 of approximately 175 Native American languages have speakers across generations. What caused this loss of languages? Why? How can it be prevented?

We are all members of a social group and members of `society´ as a whole. People interact in many ways and communication is just about the most common and among the most important. Whatever is meaningful to a group, from their everyday life to their traditions constitutes their very own culture and is generally respected by all group members. Language is only one of such items. For ethnic minority groups that may have a language of their own, their language is a cornerstone in their culture.

The novel Mark Haddon has written contains a lot of meaningful ideas and has successfully written it in a way that is skilful and provides a variety of appropriate language and distinctive qualities that include diagrams, structure of the novel and narration. In doing that, it allows the audience to provoke thought and challenges them with profound views about the deep and meaningful ideas that are within the novel. The audience is introduced to different concepts such as Christopher’s struggles with the acceptance of truth, values of family relationships, growing up, and social interaction which are all evident in the novel and shown through Haddon’s use of different language and conventions.

N. Scott Momaday, novelist and part Native American, describes the ancient American Indian who has no regard for the well being of his land in his novel The Man Made of Words. Man cannot be like the paleolithic indian Momaday describes, but rather, he must understand the “vital link between the earth and himself, a link that implies an intricate network of rights and responsibilities”, and also the idea that, “he has the ability to devastate and perhaps destroy his environment” (Momaday 31). For generations Native Americans have successfully thrived on their land, a tradition that has allowed them to develop their perception of their place in our world. The Native American worldview is a complex yet fascinating topic, specifically in contrast with the worldview of Western Europeans. With the constant pressure to develop and commercialize land in the United States, Native Americans and western developers bring different worldviews to an important debate in the Grand Canyon with regard to the spiritual and historical values of the land.

For those languages which have no written form, when the language dies off, so does the accumulated knowledge and history of the culture. Sadly, indigenous languages around the world are dying off at an alarming rate. It is estimated that nearly half of the languages spoken today are likely to die off within the next century if steps are not taken to preserve those which still exist.

In the United States, an emphasize in learning the dominant language, English for example, can inevitably put other languages within the country in extinction. In reality, there are many other spoken languages in the United Sates, like those spoken by Native Americans, that are becoming endangered because of the immensity of more used languages. One may ask, what is an endangered language? According to Michael Cahill (Bonvillain), who has studied and researched many different endangered languages around the world, a language is endangered when "it is in fairly eminent danger of dying out." Cahill states two ways to quickly identify when a language is on its way to becoming endangered. One is when the

Over centuries we have seen the amount and complexity of languages all across the globe reduced. If this trend continues, we could see the number of world languages potentially reduced from 6,000 to 600 in the future. Colonization and urbanization has led to the abolishment of languages spoke by smaller and less dominant civilizations. McWhorter uses the Native Americans in North America and the Aboriginal

2. What are the cultural disadvantages of being in this linguistic minority and speaking the minority's language?

In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Marquez employs the motif of flowers within the novel to illustrate the role of women within a Latin American society; the cultural and symbolic implications of this associate flowers with purity, victimization, gender barriers, and deceit. In doing so, Marquez creates a microcosm of Latin America, exposing the core of Columbian culture and society with all its aspects such as ethnicity, and social norms and conventions that led to a series of insecurities and poverty in the community, and its affect on the role of women. The cultural context of this novel must first be considered before examining the symbolic importance of flowers.

Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein's writings about our personal deaths and how we are to relate to our personal deaths as individuals has interested me.

Originally published in the Wall Street Journal in 2010, Lera Boroditsky’s paper titled “Lost in Translation” analyzes the impact language has on thought. Formatted as more of a persuasive than truth seeking essay, Boroditsky begins by asking the reader if the language a person speaks shapes the way they think. This makes the reader believe as though she is truly trying to find an answer to this inquiry, but as the paper goes on, the reader is mostly introduced to evidence that supports Boroditsky’s stance and she merely touches upon the argument of the opposing side. Although Boroditsky does not include more counterarguments, “Lost in Translation” is a well written article which demonstrates that languages indeed shape the way people think through her use of the Rhetorical Triangle, inductive logic, and her stylistic choices.

Language is universal. People voice their ideas, emotions, and thoughts across to the world through language. Multitudes of people across the country speak a varierty of languages. However, a foreigner is reduced to their native language, and sometimes has difficulties mainstreaming English into their dialect. A native language is a foreigner's blueprint for the world to hear. Native language gives homage to a foreigner's culture and home life. Native tongues open doors for education and job opprutunities. A native tongue is translated in books and plastered on signs across the communites. Imagine if language decreased to just English, and no another language existed. People would mirror each other, and have no idea of diversity. So where