Kusunda language: What is language death? How to save a dying language? Why is it important to save a language?
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INTRODUCTION
Language has been a very useful medium for people to communicate among each other. By using language, people are able to convey their thoughts, ideas and opinions. Language also plays an important role because people are able to express their feelings and emotions. When a particular person needs another person to listen to their problems, they can always share their feelings with others that later will help them to feel better. In other words, language can also help people deal with their psychological aspects. As reported in BBC news by Colls (2009), there are approximately seven thousand languages being spoken around the world. He states that there are plenty of languages around the world which the languages are spoken distinctively among different ethnic groups. Many researches are hardly able to prove when the early languages started in this world until there are plenty of emergence of new languages.
Despite the great number of languages in the world, many people do not realize that languages however possess high possibility to shrink as they go along the decades. Colls (2009) further reports that in 1992, a prominent US linguist had stunned the academic world by making prediction that ninety percent of the world’s language would have ceased to exist by the year
2100. Currently, there are about 473 languages classified as endangered language as collected by a global database of languages, a US organization owned by Christian Group SIL International.
This critical issue is however neglected as stated by a prominent French linguist, Claude Hagege,
“Most people are not at all interested in the death of the language”. This indicates that many people do not aware that some languages in the world are in great danger. But if they happen to be aware of this issue, they are not interested to discuss or do something about it.
People around the world should be exposed on this heavy matter so that they are aware of what is happening to their language.
INTRODUCTION
Language has been a very useful medium for people to communicate among each other. By using language, people are able to convey their thoughts, ideas and opinions. Language also plays an important role because people are able to express their feelings and emotions. When a particular person needs another person to listen to their problems, they can always share their feelings with others that later will help them to feel better. In other words, language can also help people deal with their psychological aspects. As reported in BBC news by Colls (2009), there are approximately seven thousand languages being spoken around the world. He states that there are plenty of languages around the world which the languages are spoken distinctively among different ethnic groups. Many researches are hardly able to prove when the early languages started in this world until there are plenty of emergence of new languages.
Despite the great number of languages in the world, many people do not realize that languages however possess high possibility to shrink as they go along the decades. Colls (2009) further reports that in 1992, a prominent US linguist had stunned the academic world by making prediction that ninety percent of the world’s language would have ceased to exist by the year
2100. Currently, there are about 473 languages classified as endangered language as collected by a global database of languages, a US organization owned by Christian Group SIL International.
This critical issue is however neglected as stated by a prominent French linguist, Claude Hagege,
“Most people are not at all interested in the death of the language”. This indicates that many people do not aware that some languages in the world are in great danger. But if they happen to be aware of this issue, they are not interested to discuss or do something about it.
People around the world should be exposed on this heavy matter so that they are aware of what is happening to their language.
References: Sueyoshi et al. (2005). Diversity and Endangerment of Languages in Nepal. UNESCO Kathmandu Series of Monographs and Working Papers: No 7, pp Watters, David E., (2005). Notes on Kusunda Grammar: a linguistic isolate of Nepal. Crystal, D. (2000). Language death. (p.p 1 – 23) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holmes, J. (2013). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. UK: Pearson Education Limited v. Crawford, J. (1995). Endangered Native American Languages: What is to be done, and Why? The Blingual Research Journal, Winter 1995 Fereira, M. C. (2013). Language Death (Why should we care). Advanced English and Language Analysis 1. Tuckman, J. (2011). Language at risk of dying out – the last two speakers aren 't talking. White, S. (2012). The last word: Kusunda language set to die out because one speaker is left Höhn, V. (2007). Language Death: When languages disappear. Munich: GRIN Publishing GmbH Brenzinger, M. (1992). Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa Nordquist, R. (2014) Language Death. Accessed from About Education website, http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/languagedeathterm.htm on 8th December 2014 Kindell, G. (2014). Endangered Language Groups. Accessed from http://www01.sil.org/sociolx/ndg-lg-grps.html on 8th December 2014 xiii. Pereltsvaig (2012). Kusunda, a language like no other? Accessed from http://languagesoftheworld.info/linguistic-typology/kusunda-a-language-like-no-other.html Gell-Mann et al. (2003). Kusunda: An Indo-Pacific language in Nepall. Accessed from http://www.pnas.org/content/101/15/5692.full on 8th November 2014