No one knows how many
languages there are currently spoken, but common consensus is between 6000 and 7000
languages. Languages are highly concentrated and the 8 largest languages cover
more than 40% of the number of speakers worldwide (Table1).
Table1: Distribution
of world languages by number of first-language speakers (Paul et al., 2013)
Other languages are spoken by small
communities and many of them are endangered languages. According to some
estimates, half of the endangered languages are going to fade away within the
next 50 years. It is also said that one language dies every two weeks. A dying
language can have thousands of living speakers but when the youngest speakers
are grandparents and older, the language is in danger of vanishing.
Intergenerational transmission doesn’t work when the parent generation
understands the language, but they don’t speak it to their children or among
themselves.
The endangerment of language is severe to
culture because language is the basis of collective memory, values and
identities. Therefore, international communities, like UNESCO, SIL International and Ethnologue are doing their best
to save the endangered languages. Some of the international operators focus on
statistics and codification on their research. It is said that reason for this development
is globalization where the economically powerful languages dominate other
languages.
Globalization affects to our daily life in
many ways. Some of the effects are invisible and hard to comprehend and others
are unambiguous. The development of technology is one of the most substantial
consequences of globalization. Where tales and stories used to be for entertainment
and a way to transfer knowledge, today it is technology and the Internet that
is used for communication and entertainment.
Kenneth Goldsmith said “If It Doesn't
Exist on the Internet, It Doesn't Exist”. This is true in the world of
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google. Social media is a medium that combines
enormous amount of people in a way that is never seen before. People can today
connect around the world and they can work for the same cause. Everyone with a Facebook
account can express their views to millions of people. Of course, your
influence is in Internet as great it is in real life, but at least you have
chance to say your opinion. Social media is also fair in the meaning that the content
counts. Twitter or YouTube are only tools to share content, content that is created
by users. Today, technology deals with tasks that were handled elsewhere
before. It works like language in some way.
However, these tools can be harnessed as a solution. In endangered
languages international operators have comprehended the power of social media
and crowdsourcing. A great example of collaboration is the Alliance For Linguistic Diversity. They have
launched the Endangered Language project as an online collaborative effort to
protect global linguistic diversity. Their website is a place where you can
suggest a language to the list of endangered languages. The actual list is an
interactive map, which you can browse like any other map in Internet. You can
also contribute the site providing material about the culture or actual
language in danger.
Introducing the endangered languages project - a video
Technology is not the answer to all problems,
but it can help people to keep their culture alive. Open your mouth and speak
up before its too late.
REFERENCES:
Endangered Languages.
Alliance for Linguistic Diversity. [www-page] Updated 2013. [cited 22.4.2013]
Available: http://www.endangeredlanguages.com
Ethnologue. Languages
of the world. [www-page] Updated 2013. [cited 22.4.2013] Available: http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size
Paul L., Simons G.
and Fennig D. (eds.) 2013. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Seventeenth
edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com
Text: Mikko Järvi, student of Independent Study in English course
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