Language Loss

Language is a very import part in our life, we carry it with us through all the steps, processes, moments experiences of our life, language built us and make us grow and the most important thing is that it grows with us, changes, modifies itself, and becomes more appropriate and specific. As we pointed out language help us to create and understand the world around us, gives meaning to everything and gives birth to emotions and feelings; a world without language would be meaningless and very lonely. Language it’s what help us grow up, the more we learn through it, the more we desire to experience and study in deep, leading us to new prospective, opening our mind to more specific and deep concepts, ideas, projects, goals. We really can’t

The film “The Linguists” follows linguists Gregory Anderson and David Harrison on their journey to learn about and document endangered languages in Bolivia, India, Arizona, and Siberia. Through their quest, they are able to interact with some of the few remaining speakers of languages that are near death and they manage to make an impact on how these communities view their heritage language. Focusing on the moribund languages of Siberia and Arizona, it becomes evident that speakers of the heritage language feel a love for the language and the culture it represents, but went through periods of oppression and embarrassment for being speakers of a minority language that ultimately shaped their attitudes on the language.

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 speaker reflects on the origins of property and possessions concerning the English men and women in colonial times when North America was discovered and inhabited. The speaker employs declarative sentences in the beginning discussing the possessive rights of the Americans and their land in North America conveying the assertive and authoritative tone of the speaker and the colonial people. There is also a sense of freedom and independence when the speaker declares for the Americans in that time period what was theirs and what was not illuminating the conflicting views and power struggle between England and the colonials in North America. “Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed,” presents

While one may use crippling language to perpetuate endless mental and physical imprisonment upon others, the utilization and knowledge of language allocates for personal freedom and empowerment.

The good may become the bad and words, like people, are modestly the victims of circumstance. It may seem useless to track, study, and observe the origins of language and the buildings blocks that comprise each phrase, but in studying dialect or linguistics we can trace and assign the historical path or human nature. Language, in some form or another has been with the human race from the beginning of time. The ways in which civilizations have communicated can be reflected and understood through words, as if they were taking photographs of the things they witnessed the whole time. Language as whole is like an immortal being, omnipresent throughout all human

In the words of George Orwell, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” Language has been spoken for over 350,000 years. It has expanded tremendously, but its power has never changed. The use of language shapes peoples' perceptions and the depth of interactions because it can demean, avoid, portray emphasis, persuade, and conceal from simple phrases such as “I feel like” and “just”.

The binary of culture versus nature has extensive implications on the relations between settlers and native populations in the political community of the United States. Locke leverages the “wild indian” as a tool in his writing to represent a being in the state of nature. He does this while explaining the foundation of property rights (12), how labor leads to ownership (14), and the value of land versus money (55). The parallel between Natives and nature is repeatedly reinforced in the reader’s mind. Locke, at one point, directly distinguishes the Natives as uncivilized.

Language is the most powerful tool for human life. Language let human connect to each other. Language gives a lot of benefits to human, but many languages becoming dying language. “There are more than 6,000 languages in the world. We lose one every two weeks; hundreds will lose within the next generation.

New England’s Indians moved to places where food was abundant, and agriculture supplemented their hunting and gathering activities. Indians cleared fields by burning and then used the same field for eight to ten years until the soil lost its fertility (48). Indian agriculture did exhaust the land, but the rotating nature of this agriculture and low population densities minimized the damage. Indian use of other resources also rotated on a seasonal basis so that no resource was overexploited. The Indians did not use the environment in the European way, and, from the colonists’ perspective, the Indians’ shifting land use did not entitle them to ownership of the land (56). The Indians’ concept of ownership revolved around use of the land and the things on it, rather than long-term possession of a particular plot (65). Property rights shifted with the current ecological use (63). The English conceived of the land as a “private commodity rather than public commons,” (74) and believed that ownership gave them the sole right to exploit it for personal gain. The commodification of land and other resources by the English challenged the resiliency of the local ecosystems.

Having established his state of nature, Locke begins his description of the formation and transition to society, and appropriately starts with a discussion of property. “God, who hath given the World to Men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of Life, and convenience.” (Locke, Second Treatise, V.26). Here, Locke does little more than apply natural law (self preservation) to what he sees around him (land), but in doing so, makes a groundbreaking shift. He reveals that, following from natural law, men have a right to use what they have around them to further their own preservation and lives. In addition, man has an inherent, and obvious, possession of himself and all that comes with it, including, and most importantly, labor. “The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his.” (Locke, Second Treatise,

“A dead language.” Beautiful languages “Like German and French” are extinct. All things that allow a person to feel fulfilled have been removed from the dystopian

In an ever changing world we have seen the number and complexity of languages become reduced. In a Wall Street Journal article entitled What the World Will Speak in 2115, John H. McWhorter advocates for the world to see these changes as necessary and a way for communication worldwide to become more efficient and simplified. McWhorter shows how language has been streamlined for centuries as a way for citizens to adapt rather than viewed as an extinction of culture. Modern English is likely to become the dominant language worldwide but more so for the fact that it can be easily learned and is open to transformation with the times. Despite the fears of a world where lingual diversity is reduced, McWhorter suggests that there will still be variation to promote culture and communication with people from all backgrounds will be easier. The following is a summary and analysis of McWhorter’s main points describing the simplification of language. Following the summary of main points will be a hypothetical situation in what the world language could consist of 100 years from now.

John Locke is looked at as one of the most influential philosophers of all time. His works included topics like education, political philosophy, the state of nature, property, etc. Locke’s writing on property is thought to be one of the more controversial topics in philosophy today and is criticized by other philosophers. His Labor Theory of Property is also a part of the Theory of Natural law and it states that the property will become yours if and when you put your own labor into making that unowned resource yours. This essay will discuss Locke’s thesis of how one acquires property, the concepts that lead up to owning property in the natural state and an opposing view from a fellow philosopher.

Communication takes place through spoken and written language—words hold both literal and emotional meaning, which creates a bridge from abstract experiences to rational ideas. Language's role as the medium of meaning allows authors to appropriate linguistic patterns from other sources in order to modify or extend existing ideas in society (Foster 14). However, language accomplishes little beyond modifying preexisting ideas. Because it applies to entire societies, it captures only the crudest and most basic aspects of a culture’s collective experience of the world, rather than the nuances of an individual’s experience. This limitation often results in the reinforcement of broad social divisions, such as race, as seen in Native Guard, or harmful, widely held ideologies, as exemplified in Heart of Darkness. Making use of its social implications as the infrastructure of human experience, authors use language as a literary symbol to represent the inherent shortcomings of the use of a wide-reaching societal tool to shape individual understandings of reality. Language's nature as a broad medium for culture makes it a clumsy and inaccurate tool for communicating the nuances of an individual's experience of life.