Saving Endangered Languages … still more
Here are a few more reasons why we should make the effort to save endangered languages.
Languages contain our history. Take away Shakespeare, Pepys, Wordsworth, Tennessee Williams, Ernest Hemingway, Eugene O’Neill, Stephen Sondheim, and a host of other poets, authors, and lyricists and much of English speaking culture becomes invisible. As the Irish seek to reclaim their history, much access is through language – – their poets, songs, and sagas. Not all access is written, to be sure. In what ever place we find the words of our ancestors, we can speak with them and interact with them through language. They disappear without it.
Languages contain knowledge unique to each. David Crystal quotes Emerson, “As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man.” A diplomat negotiating a contract in an unfamiliar language (she may be thinking, “Don’t they all speak English?”) may learn the hard way that she has not thought of everything; for example, commas are crucially important in English, but don’t exist in many languages. If the diplomat does not know what is used in their stead, errors can, and have, occurred. Nomenclature and other knowledge about animals and plants among tribes familiar with a remote area have led to transformative discoveries and a deeper understanding of nature. The Whorfian Hypothesis even suggests that if there are no words for a concept, we cannot think it. Different languages have different definitions of time, for example, even of color. Each language provides a new window into the human mind.
If you haven’t already heard of it, you may be interested in “When Languages Die” by K. David Harrison. It is clear and interesting…I believe it was written for non-linguists