Andzadúla would disagree with John McWhorter's prevailing idea from his essay "The Cosmopolitan Tongue", which is that language death is a positive, unifying thing. Their ideas are opposing. In Andzadúla's book "How To Tame A Wild Tongue", she expresses just how much language is a part of a person. She believes that not allowing someone to speak their native language is an act of violence. So permanently silencing a language must be the most horrific, violent thing that could happen because in turn it is also permanently silencing an entire group of people whom spoke that language.
I agree with John Mcwhorter's essay to an extent. Death of a language is a unifying thing. To have a dead language there must be no native speakers left, no one who is fluent in the language as a first language. With a language being removed from the world there is one less variable to deal with. For example, in a mathematical equation the more variables there are the more complex the equation (7x-12y+4z=19). Just like an equation with only a few variables is simpler in comparison (x+3=8). With less languages to speak people would form larger communities, because the smaller amount of languages still needs to cover the same amount of area as the large number of languages did. However, I don't believe language death is a positive thing. With the loss of a language that culture also dies. Words with beautiful, unique meanings are lost. Yes, people are unified by the deaths of languages, but it is a violent unity. People are unified over the act of conquering and vanquishing of languages because it removes a variable from the equation. It makes it simpler to unite.
I agree with your thought that death of a language is not a good thing just because it brings people together. When languages die, we lose the culture that came along with it. Andzaúla writes in her excerpt that she feels discriminated due to the globalization of the English language. She states that she is forced to take classes in college that are meant to strip her native tongue from her. On the other hand, McWhorther states in his excerpt that the death of a language is a good thing because it means that people are coming together. He makes several points about the uniqueness there is to each language and that every language other than your native tongue is difficult to learn if you are over the age of 15. He mentions that English is one of the simpler languages to learn compared to a language like Chinese or Czech. I also do not believe that Andazúla and McWhorther would agree with each other’s ideas due to the fact that Andazúla felt as if it is wrong to strip someone’s native tongue from them and force them to learn English, whereas McWhorther believes that the globalization of English is a good thing, it brings people together.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that just because some people may see the death of a language as one less barrier to deal with that it is NOT a positive thing because, you're right, when a language dies so does the culture. I also agree that John McWhorter (who wrote "The Cosmopolitan Tongue") and Anzaldas' "How to tame a wild tongue" have completely different views when it comes to the worth/value of a language. In "The Cosmopolitan Tongue" it seems like that the author sees language as more of a burden and an obstacle and sees that language dying leads to unity. He says there's currently 6000 languages but in the next century there will be only 600.
ReplyDeleteI disagree that less languages means less barriers because we lose the diversity aspect and diversity is what keeps our world exciting. In "How to tame a Wild Tongue" language is presented as a sacred part of both society as well as individuals. I agree that language and culture are deeply connected and you can't have one without the other. Not accepting an individual's (or a culture) is what leads to racism, sexism, homophobia etc. because as humans we fear what we don't understand and we want everything to be familiar and we want to assimilate everyone into the culture that we're most familiar with. You did a great job with analysis.
I agree removing a language does eliminate a variable and is beneficial in uniting us. I also agree that removing a language is killing a culture. For example, in John McWorther's essay he speaks about the death of the last person to use the Eyak language in southern Alaska. When That person died the culture did too. That was the last time words spoken in this language would ever be spoken again. Which means the history, traditions, and language is completely gone. Is this a good thing? Their descendants no longer know where they come from or their background. They don't truly know who they are. In this case we're losing a lot; but we are eliminating more problems that divide us.
ReplyDeletewhat I appreciate the most about your blog is the use of the mathematical expression to explain how much complex it will be to have various languages. I strongly agree with the fact that the introduction of new languages and the use of the already present 6000 ones would make things more complex thereby causing us to think more and also be eager to understand and learn new things about each other. From my point of view, this is real unit. Yes it is obviously going to be hard to communicate with people who speak completely different languages but the willingness to learn in oder for communication to be possible makes everything awesome! I also completely disagree with the death of a language being a positive thing because it is quite impossible for every single person on earth to speak the same language. First of, we were not created that way and this ties back to the story of the tower of babel in the bible. Secondly, Life would be freaking boring, everything would be so basic and less inspiring. The feeling we all get when we visit a new country for the first time to learn abut their culture, language and so many other things would be gone. So for sure life would be way better and way more fun if the diversity of language is always present.
ReplyDeleteThis was a good analysis which I mostly agree with. The death of language undeniably increases unity by decreasing the amount of different languages. In terms of a social aspect in life, this is very positive and beneficial. People who would often have a huge gap or barrier between them (two totally different languages) would communicate and have the opportunity to interact they would not have without that. You all have good points about how the culture dies but cannot glaze over the positive impacts it would have. Those cultures can still be appreciated and studied. The people who would be sadden by this are dead anyway so its hard to determine 100% this is a negative thing. If the world decreased its amount of different languages, people would undeniably be much closer together. People would not feel isolated when in situations where their language is a huge minority. It would help diminish awkward situations where language handicaps a conversation or the ability to get to know someone. These are all reasons I think we should be slower to say it would be bad just because culture would be lost.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI thought you had an excellent explanation for languages, but i think it comes down to what your objective view of the world is and what you would like to see it become. languages are one of the greatest barriers for understanding we have as a species. For me personally ,im more aligned with McWhorters view becasue the death of languages mean we are unifying as a bigger group around a common similarity. I found it fascinating how he described the formation of new languages, cause we could maybe see in a few thousand years english split into multiple languages, just because one language dies doesn't mean we will be forever left with fewer and fewer languages.I agree with you that Andzadúla would disagree with McWhorters views on language, for her a dead language is a dead culture, but thats not necessarily evident. As McWorter said " All humans could somehow exhibit the exact same culture- Yet their languages would be as different as they are now." culture inst based off ones language, its the traditions.For example most of the romance languages are the progeny of Latin, which of course is a dead langauge, but all these other languages have taken parts of it and made them their own which is why culture has nothing to do with the language.
ReplyDeleteI strongly agree with both portions of your answer. Andzadula would definatly disagree with "The Cosmopolitan Tongue". She embraces different language and thinks that we all need to embrace our native language as well. Contrary to Andzadula's essay, "The Cosmopolitan Tongue" engages in the idea that less language diversity would be beneficial to the coming together of different cultures. I like how you related complex equations to language. Saying the more diverse our language network is, the more complicated the problem becomes. I agree with this relation, however I do not think the death of a language is a positive event. When a language dies so does a piece of history and culture.
ReplyDelete