I recently visited a college called Trinity Western University and attended a Linguistics course. Although I'm not really interested in studying languages, I think I might enjoy teaching English as a Second Language, so this was a great class for me to visit. It was interesting, because the subject the teacher was "lecturing" on was language death.
If you don't really know what language death means, it is simply the death of languages. The number of languages spoken is decreasing, although there are still thousands of languages spoken around the world. Why are languages disappearing?
Many people from other countries look at America and see our prosperous lives and desire to be as wealthy as Americans. However, in order to become "American," they must give up much of their culture. This does not necessarily mean that Americans intentionally ask foreigners to change their entire way of living, but the newcomers themselves often believe that it is required of them to give up their former life in order to start a new one here. All Americans ask is that they speak English, because Americans are not forced to learn other languages to the point of fluency. Especially for those involved in business, learning English can be vital to keeping a job.
Many teenagers will also give up their culture. When a child moves to America, if they desire to communicate with people at their school and fit in, they may be forced to give up their culture. Of course, they can surround themselves with people from their native country, but if there are not many in a school, young people may find themselves completely giving up their childhood for the American way.
So, why does it matter if languages are dying if the native speakers themselves are causing it? Maybe the world is better off speaking all English. However, with the language death often comes the death of certain cultures.
It is possible that the world would be fine if everyone lived like America. We might survive quite some time. If people want to preserve nature, though, we must also preserve the culture. Location greatly influences culture, in everything from clothing style to religions. If culture is destroyed and everyone lives the same way, there will no longer be diverse nature. Although we do have quite different climates in America, we do not have tropical rainforests like those of Africa. What would happen to those rainforests if all Africans began living like Americans so they could be prosperous?
What can we do to preserve culture and prevent an environmental disaster? Perhaps it is the responsibility of Americas and all other wealthy countries to learn more about the languages and cultures of people from foreign nations, so that we can encourage them not to give up their lives.
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That's so true, so many people are giving up their culture just to fit in in America. And it's sad.
I'm currently taking a class, "Cultural Diversity in Education". The entire point of the class is to introduce methods to incorporate diversity in the classroom, not only so students can respect the cultures from around the world, but also to encourage students to learn more about and be proud of where they come from. I think just something as simple as this - integrating diversity into education - could help a little and at least make citizens more aware of the issue at hand.