I saw this morning yet another article on the “crisis” of disappearing languages. There seem to be about 7000 languages in use around the world at this point and many are sliding into disuse and into history.
I don’t see how this is a “crisis,” no more than the fact that artifacts from the past are no longer made, like buggy whips and push mowers for your lawn and remember men’s hats and the universal wrist watch? You can still find these things but it is much harder to find them and they are way more expensive due to their markets being so small.
In the Bible it holds that we all used to speak one language but God confounded us with many languages because we got too uppity. So, the Bible says . . . (look, I played the Bible Card!).
Languages are an important element of culture, and in warfare, conquerors often tried to eliminate languages to subdue the conquered (Hello, Normans!), but this is not some enforced language obliteration, this is death by natural causes.
If languages dying at a fairly fast pace is a crisis, what about the cultures that are being ground into dust by modernity? Should we not be bemoaning the demise of various cultures, too?
It seems that much of the demise of languages has natural causes. Imagine a culture which still had a hieroglyphic written language trying to use a computer. Do, you think Chinese computer trolls are using keyboards suitable for the Chinese language?
It seems that the homogenization of cultures and languages is based upon a desire to communicate, through words, through songs, through visual images with global audiences. Comedians now tour foreign countries, as do rock stars (Taylor Swift in Japan!).
All languages are man-made. All languages have strengths and weakness. No one language is perfect for all modes of communication, but two people can communicate far, far better when they share a language that when they do not. Europeans are often proud that they can communicate in multiple languages (I was served in Switzerland by a young lady who was fluent in both British English and American English!) but what if all that mental effort learning multiple languages was put into making politics or medicine better?
I understand old people bemoaning the demise of their language but it seems that the language dying is just a manifestation of the people using it dying.
I believe the operative proverb is “use it or lose it.”
Uncommon Sense 