What language you speak ?
Posted by: blogofdifferential on: November 25, 2008
I read a thread on “Crazyengineers.com” about many languages on earth dying. Here is a link to that:
http://www.crazyengineers.com/forum/debate-masterminds/8285-every-year-many-language-dies-out.html
This makes me to write a post here. I’m agree to the statement. Many languages are dying every year. Globalization is forcing us to use English more and more, reducing use of other languages. I agree that English is a language of business, language of science and all. I am not against learning it and using it as a part of business life. But what I’m against is using it as a communication media of day-to-day life. In India, many Parents are opting English as a medium for Primary and secondary education of their kids. I think, English could be taught as a language, but why does one need to learn all the subjects in English. Its funny to learn our history in other people’s language. I wonder if any student from such English medium would have asked ‘if we fought against British and made them leave the country why are we using their language”. Now even it is said that when one learns something in his mother-tongue, it is well grasped as compared to when you learn it in some other language. Still one can see many English medium schools opening every year.
The harm in this is, English is becoming (or has already become ??) replacement for your mother tongue. we use many words from English as a replacement to the words in other languages. If this continues to be likes this, more and more words will be replaced by English words causing an entire language to be replaced by English.
One of my friend asked ‘If this happens, what’s harm in it ?’ As per him, people could go in any part of world and would be able to communicate to anyone. Benefit agreed, but one cannot sacrifices his mother-tongue die for this benefit.
What I feel is that one should use English only for business purpose and use his mother tongue in day-to-days life. This will keep the languages alive and next generations won’t have to miss their mother’s language.
Let me know your views on this.
4 Responses to "What language you speak ?"
January 27, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Nice one. I think you haven’t updated your blog for long time. Looking forward to the new entry.
March 16, 2009 at 1:46 pm
There are, as you note, tremendous efficiencies in using a single language.
I suppose it is worth noting that English itself is mostly spoken by people who, ethnically speaking, are not “native English speakers”. For example, English has almost completely replace Gaelic in Ireland.
It’s probably also worth noting that English itself is full of “borrowed” words. Even ignoring the modern influx of vocabulary from Spanish, Japanese, etc., English has for a long time include large helpings of Greek, Latin and French. Really, the old AngloSaxon is a long-buried component of the English lexicon. I speculate that any language which would be as successful as English over an extended period of time, would necessarily accumulate words this way.
April 11, 2009 at 11:29 am
generally, i agree with you.
Yes, English is the international language. Thus, i have to learn English if i wanna go abroad.
I live in indonesia and using indonesian language (bahasa indonesia). Several indonesian words has been replaced by english words in our informal communication (and sometimes in the formal one).
I am indonesian, and javanese (for more specific). FYI, javanese has its own language and character (letter). The bad news is that many javanese nowadays cannot write in javanese character.
anyway, nice post.
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December 23, 2008 at 2:45 am
96% of people on earth speak just 4% of the existing languages!!!!!!! I am a portuguese and guarani (pre-colombiam american language) speaker, and in Brazil, I have seen lots of indigenous languages disappearing… It’s really sad…