Jennifer Blog Post 1


One of the main topics in Linguistic Anthropology is the idea of Language Death. When someone thinks about extinction or death it’s associated with an animal species extinction or the death of a person; however, languages don’t come to mind. According to The New Republic Linguists estimate that 50% of the languages spoken today will disappear in the next 100 years. Often times political, economic, or culture changes are reasons for the death of a language. One example is teaching the younger generation in the family the dominant language rather than the minority language in the case of achieving economic success. One other cause of a language death that isn’t always thought of is natural disasters. For instance, plate tectonic movements causing parts of islands to sink leading to cultures having to move further inland. Many linguists are worried about the increase of global warming is going to further accelerate the disappearance and death of many languages. This is because of the increased pressures to migrate to other places which changes a language and eventually causes the death of the language. To a bystander the idea of language death isn’t one of their main priorities but for those in the linguistic anthropology it is a huge loss. Not only for the people and their culture but also for their field of work if they can’t record and study the language to preserve it and keep it on the record that it existed. There are over 7,000 languages spoken around the world today and if the predictions are true half of them will have disappeared in the next 100 years, this is a lot of culture and diversity to lose.

https://newrepublic.com/article/125501/languages-die

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 28, 2018 at 6:42 PM

    What interests me most about linguistics is how languages change and develop and why The thing that we have to realize is that we change our language based on some necessity and we sometimes do it without even realizing what we are doing. We do not even think about the changes we make to a language until we realize that they are widespread and popular, which makes them cultural phenomena. Humans are always dealing with them, but we do not consider them in the time that we are. History always repeats itself and it is interesting to see our language changing without us thinking about it until it has become popular. The thing that is also interesting about our evolving language skills is how it creates isolation for people who are different or old enough not to understand them. Obviously this isolation has good and bad implications. We see this today in the emoji language that separates teenagers from their parents, which the teens view as good, because mom and dad can not read their texts, while mom and dad have no idea what is going on. Like I said before, change based on some kind of necessity. These changes will always create some kind of isolation, because not everyone can keep up, and also because not everyone wants to. I see this in how older generations talk and some words or phrases throw off younger generations. Sometimes the younger generations understand, but for the most part, they do not seem to care to. I think this is because it is not necessary for them to understand and use the phrases, because they see that no one else can. These changes are always pushed by the majority which fascinates me because even though the majority is now pushing for individuality, it is still majority control. The whole function of majority is amazing to watch and it is awesome that I can watch it through the change in my own language and in the languages of different generations and groups.

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