Death of Language Disaffects Global Community
The buzzword of the hour in the wake of the disruptive Brexit vote and surprising American election of Donald Trump is globalization. It seems impossible to read the newspaper or listen to the radio without being hit with the G-word as the world scrambles to understand what fuels the West’s new right wing surge. However, its prominence allows us an opportunity to shed light on one of globalization’s oft-ignored casualties: language. Of the world’s estimated 6,000 languages, perhaps a sixth of them are spoken by little more than a handful of people; with each passing year, 25 languages die out with their last native speaker. In countries like Pakistan, a historical crossroads where cultures, religions, goods, and languages have collided for centuries, up to 28 of its 70-plus languages are in danger of extinction. Next door in India, 220 languages have been lost in the last 50 years and another 150 are at risk of meeting the same fate in the next 50 years. In Europe, of its 250 languages, 90 percent are in danger, and an estimated 140 are already extinct. The trend continues in places like China, where more than 100 regional languages are on the brink of extinction as ethnic minorities have failed to actively speak their languages.
The slow deaths of these languages result from a hardly inevitable active pursuit. For example, in China, the repression of language has been quasi-government policy for decades, and today in a country of 1.3 billion people there remains only one recognized language: Mandarin. In India, where the government has 22 official languages and recognizes 122, there are almost 800 actively spoken languages. However, this battle against linguistic variety is not only exacerbated by government action, but also by educational institutions. In Pakistan, one of the most prestigious schools banned students from speaking Punjabi in the classroom, calling it “foul.” In the UK, the number of undergraduate language majors has been cut in half in the last few years, and only 7 percent of American college students are even enrolled in a language course.
In a world obsessed with growth and economic data, the loss of languages is often intangible. How can you put a dollar amount on an Amazonian tribe’s honored tradition of expressing their connection to the forest, or the oral histories of the Apache?
Environmental degradation is a similar victim of our clumsy sprint into modernity, but unlike the death of language, is more easily made tangible. Wall Street is only so valuable if sea levels rise and drown Manhattan, after all. With language, there is not a similarly cold way to articulate the danger of its loss. Beyond the cultural world of art and literature, the death of language is having a severe effect on our politics.
It is unrealistic that in the twenty-first century we should endeavor to save every community’s language, but it would similarly be ignorant to believe we can continue to reap the benefits of our modern world while refusing to view it from different peoples’ eyes. The late Senator Paul Simon, writing as part of a report entitled “Securing America’s Future,” put it succinctly when he wrote in 2003 that increasing international languages and education would “create a base of public opinion that would encourage responsible action rather than popular but unwise actions.”
Chad is an undergraduate in the School of Foreign Service majoring in International Politics with a concentration in Security. Outside of academics Chad is an avid photographer and traveller.