World’s languages: National languages as the part of culture should be preserved

The BBC World service broadcasted a program, dedicated to the importance of supporting and preserving the national languages of the world. The experts predict that by 2100 90% of the world’s languages will have ceased to exist.

According to the French linguist Claude Hagege the most people are not at all interested in the death of the languages. He warns: “If we are not cautious about the way English is progressing it may eventually kill most other languages”.

According to Ethnologue, a US organization owned by Christian group SIL International that compiles a global database of languages, 473 languages are currently classified as endangered.

As the globalization sweeps around the world it is natural that small communities come out of their isolation and seek interaction with the wider world. For linguists like Claude Hagege, languages are not simply a collection of words. They are living, breathing organisms holding the connections and associations that define a culture. When a language becomes extinct, the culture in which it lived is lost too. However all is not lost for those who want the smaller languages to survive. As the revival of Welsh in the UK and Maori in New Zealand suggest, a language can be brought back from the brink.

“We would spend an awful lot of money to preserve a very old building, because it is part of our heritage. These languages and cultures are equally part of our heritage and merit preservation”, - considers Ethnologue editor Paul Lewis.