PROSE NON-FICTION

ADIYAT ZAHIR

Does it matter if a language becomes extinct?

Around 6,500 languages are spoken around the world. It’s incredible, really. Language is one of the amazing things that separates us from other species, which makes us unique: our ability to convey emotion, understanding and thought, all through a series of sounds made with our bodies, and, in some cases, through our hands and other bodily gestures. However, of the 6,500 languages spoken by the seven billion people on Earth, the top ten languages spoken claim about half the population. 2,000 of those languages are estimated to have fewer than 1,000 speakers. Most linguists estimate fifty percent of all languages will be gone by the end of this century, and some put it as high as ninety percent! But what you should be asking is, who cares? Does it really matter if a language dies? In this essay, I aim to explore the consequences of a language going extinct and whether or not it matters.

To understand the effects of language extinction, we need to explore what a language offers, beside the fact of being able to communicate ideas with one another. Languages are so much more than that.The loss of a language means the loss of so many other things, things which we may never be able to experience again.

“We spend huge amounts of money protecting species and biodiversity, so why should it be that the one thing that makes us singularly human shouldn’t be similarly nourished and protected?” So says Mark Turin, a linguist at Yale University. To some extent, he is entirely correct. Some may even argue that languages are more important because of the power they hold.

Languages are conduits of human heritage. They express history which was never written, and what might have been lost lost remains through this fantastic medium.The Iliad and the Odyssey are examples of texts that were originally never intended to be written down. They were oral stories. Stories to be told, passed down by word of mouth, generation to generation. Now imagine how many other oral traditions were lost because they were never written down, because the language was lost?