Chapter 6: Language

Article: France’s Pointless, Hopeless Battle Against English

Somebody wanted but so then
Many french students in universities wanted classes in english, but the french government and many professors wanted to protect the french language so the professors went on strike protesting against classes taught in english then hundreds of prospective professors wanting to teach classes in english were turned away.

Map:

Although 41% of people in India speak Hindi India has twenty-two official languages, higher than that of any other country.

Essay:
Chapter 5: Languages
Disappearing Languages - Rosemarie Ostler
Language Death - David Crystal
Language Revival - Hawaiian Rates as the Nations Only Growing Indigenous Language -Ron Staton

Question: Why do languages die and how can cultures protect them? 

           As languages go extinct the world is slowly moving toward a single Global Language and the parts of the cultures attached to the language are also fading away. According to David Crystal in his article Language Death "linguists predict at least half of the worlds 6000 or so languages will be dead or dying by the year 2050" But why is this happening and how can it be stopped. 

Whether a language is not passed down because genocide, cultural change, the break up of a community or the younger generation’s disinterest in the language, the main reason languages die are because they are not passed down to a younger generation. Passing the language down to the next generation is vital in both perpetuating a language and revitalizing it, which is why some schools in Hawaii are now teaching classes Hawaiian. By passing the language down to a new generation they are actually revitalizing a language that was down to only around 1,500 speakers. Today through teaching Hawaiian to younger generations the number of speakers has risen to 6,000 to 8,000 people, proving that language revitalization is possible. Hebrew is another example of a language that was revitalized. In 1881 Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and his friends agreed to exclusively

speak hebrew and thus hebrew revitalization began. These examples prove that is required to save a language is a strong desire to keep it a live. In order to save a language and keep the world from becoming Monolingual it is important that the people want to keep languages live. By spreading awareness about dying and extinct languages and fostering a desire to keep that special part of  cultures alive many languages on the verge of extinction may have a chance of revitalization.