Our catch phrase is on its way.
Dear Fellow Earthlings,
Poor Seneca (as a living language) appears to be in its final moments. I hope I can help change this and make it come back...
But today I am going to talk about Japanese: It may not be in its final moments, but some therapies need to be applied to it to ensure its continued good health. At present the biggest threat to Japanese is globalization. It would make sense for the world to speak a common language. As a result, there are many people who are willing to give up their native tongues and just speak English or Spanish or Arabic.
Since it takes extra energy, time, and money to develop and maintain two, three, or four languages, people tend to either eliminate languages that have little utility or to limit the use of those languages to particular situations (such as “ceremonies” or “small talk” or “speaking with family members”). Once a language is assigned only limited roles by its users, it quickly begins to deteriorate.
In Installments 165, 166, 170, 181, 189, 190, 191, 192, and 193 I reviewed Joshua Fishman’s pivotal sociolinguistic masterpiece “Reversing Language Shift”. You are urged to go over those installments prior to completing THIS installment...
At present, some companies in Japan are pushing for English to be the official language of the company. In schools in Japan the numbers of courses using English as the language of instruction are on the rise. And, most tragically, little children are often being taught English numbers, colors, and songs even before they have mastered basic numbers, colors, and songs in Japanese.
Just as surely as the Kinzua dam drowned out the last Seneca speaking villages back in 1965, so is the Globalization dam now threatening to drown out the villages – and the suburbs and the cities – of Japan!
As the Japanese people are becoming inextricably intertwined in the tangles of the worldwide web and of the English that constitutes much of that system, they are beginning to lose their language.
English loanwords need to be squelched before they metastasize and completely replace native Japanese words. The government, the media, educators, parents, scholars, businesspeople, artists, merchants, marketers, web designers, entertainers – everyone needs to put a stop to the destruction and Indoeuropeanization of Japanese.
Why? Because without its language “Nihon” will just be “Japan” – cute with its mangas and its high tech, but stripped of a large part of its tamashii (soul)!
* By the way, “Adachi Kan’ichi” is the Japanese name I have assigned myself!
Very truly yours,
Adachi Kan’ichi (English name: Steve Walker) Earthsaver and “Charin Charin”** composer
** “Charin Charin” are Japanese language "Jingles", developed to help people who wish to have their pronunciation of Japanese sound more nativelike.
© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.