Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (SOCHUM)
Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (SOCHUM)
Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (SOCHUM)
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only a h<strong>and</strong>ful of speakers, including Abaga with five,<br />
Guramalum with three, <strong>and</strong> Laua with just one. Thus,<br />
much of the language death expected over the next<br />
decades is predicted to occur to these languages in<br />
Papua New Guinea. 58<br />
Perhaps the most extreme case of language<br />
endangerment today is taking place in Australia.<br />
Linguists estimate that at the time of the British<br />
arrival in Australia at the end of the 18th century, the<br />
indigenous population spoke about 250 languages<br />
across the continent. Three-fifths of those languages<br />
have been completely eliminated, <strong>and</strong> another eighty<br />
or so will likely die very soon, as there are only older<br />
speakers left. These shocking numbers leave only<br />
twenty, or 8%, or the languages of Australia still viable<br />
today. Most of the language death in Australia has<br />
occurred because of the state policies toward the<br />
Aboriginal population over the past two hundred<br />
years, with numerous instances of forced relocation,<br />
lack of treatment for European diseases, <strong>and</strong> the<br />
murder of tribes of indigenous peoples. 59<br />
Overall, as the various figures intimate, the problem<br />
of language endangerment is real, severe, <strong>and</strong><br />
worsening every year. Dominant European languages<br />
have been exp<strong>and</strong>ing throughout the Americas,<br />
Africa, <strong>and</strong> Asia <strong>and</strong> the Pacific <strong>and</strong>, in the process,<br />
have pulled speakers away from local indigenous<br />
languages. Today, linguists estimate that only 5% to<br />
10% of the world’s languages are completely safe from<br />
endangerment <strong>and</strong> extinction, with the rest either<br />
moribund or weakening. 60 Predictions vary widely for<br />
how rapidly language death is occurring; the lowest<br />
suggests that 25% of the world’s languages will be<br />
extinct within one hundred years, while the highest<br />
puts that number at 90%. Even if we take the st<strong>and</strong>ard<br />
projection that half of the world’s languages will die<br />
in the next one hundred years, this still amounts to<br />
the death of one language every two weeks. 61<br />
Should We Care About Language<br />
endangerment?<br />
Reasons Not To Support Language Revitalization Efforts<br />
While the discussion of language endangerment<br />
so far has suggested that this is a serious problem<br />
that must be addressed as soon as possible, there<br />
are a number of politicians, linguistics, <strong>and</strong> activists<br />
that do not believe that the international community<br />
should take significant action to revive endangered<br />
languages in the near future. the reasons that they<br />
cite range from religious arguments to economic<br />
considerations, <strong>and</strong>, as evident in the lack of a strong<br />
international response thus far, it is clear that many<br />
of these reasons have been persuasive.<br />
Some people cite religious arguments as reasons<br />
to not intervene in the process of language<br />
endangerment <strong>and</strong> death. those who hold this<br />
view are generally Christians, <strong>and</strong> their arguments<br />
rest on the stories of Genesis in the Old testament.<br />
According to the Bible, Adam named all of the<br />
animals <strong>and</strong> plants that he discovered in the Garden<br />
of Eden through the inspiration of God. Thus, before<br />
the fall of man <strong>and</strong> the birth of original sin, there<br />
was one “pure” language. Generations later, states<br />
the Bible, humans attempted to build a structure<br />
that would reach the heavens, termed the Tower of<br />
Babel; God considered the tower to be a show of<br />
excessive human pride, so he destroyed the tower,<br />
scattered the people across the face of the earth, <strong>and</strong><br />
gave each group a different language so that they<br />
would be unable to communicate <strong>and</strong> replicate the<br />
Tower of Babel. 62 Because they believe that mankind<br />
spoke one language during the uncorrupted period<br />
of the Garden of eden <strong>and</strong> that the imposition of the<br />
diversity of languages was a curse for human pride,<br />
some Christians see the endangerment <strong>and</strong> death of<br />
languages as a positive step on the way to recreating<br />
this ideal part of human history. 63 interestingly, other<br />
religions see linguistic diversity as a positive aspect<br />
of humanity; in Islam, for example, the multitude<br />
20<br />
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