Just being able to "get by" with another language is not enough!
Dear Fellow Earthlings,
If you don't use it, you lose it! Today's topic is about saving languages. Using a language is part and parcel of the way to save it -- however, if we are unable to garner the support, cooperation, and encouragement of native speaker referents, then the language we end up with at best will be a slightly mutated form -- and at worst an approximation full of inconsistencies in grammar, syntax, phonology, reading, writing, styles, and feeling. With globalization mowing down regional and minority languages through its economic, military, religious, social, political, technological, and philosophical agendas, so called minor languages have little chance for surviving to the year 2050. It's truly been survival of the "fittest" for languages at this point. If a language does not represent "power and prestige" -- and "financial wealth", it begins to fade away. Its words, through lack of use, its users through lack of incentive and/or hope, its number of truly eloquent speakers through lack of stimulation -- and its phonologic, lexemic, morphemic, and syntactic gestures -- are overrun by TV talk ("Hi guys!" -- even when no males are being addressed!), poked out of existence by fingers texting on all of those hand held mobile devices at breakneck speed, and even shamed by "Sillies" (artificial intelligence (AI) mini-robots embedded in mobile devices). To save time and energy both language learners and language trainers settle for a "This is good enough!" attitude . BUT... One of the bounties made possible by the computerization/digitalization/globalization (C/D/G) of everything humans here on Earth have developed over the milliennia is that no matter how minor, each and every language can be preserved. Robotics can help provide AI that can categorize every single bit of data available on any language -- and even extrapolate to fill in the blanks. There IS (extrapolate here, please!) _____ for Earth's languages if we but take the time and make the efforts needed for devising C/D/G means of preserving them with accuracy rates comparable to DNA replication results. Each native speaker of kerm native language should not only have the right to say, "Regarding my language, either learn it properly or go learn Klingon or Esperanto or Vulcan or Interlingua"! All such languages are concocted and cannot match up to Onondowaga, Onondaga, Swahili, Arabic, Welsh, or any other language that was not created, but rather evolved over the centuries -- and in the context of human interaction and longterm experience. When I see the English used by non-native speakers, the limited depth of their usage is always evident -- as is what quite often appears to be a total disregard for and/or cognizance of all the subtle points physically installed in native speakers' brains. In the case of the typical non-native the non-native features will never go away unless proper training of the pertinent aspects of the target language are employed. As I fight to save languages, none of my feverish enthusiasm to save languages is lost on my own native language: English. Tomorrow I provide concrete examples of the many points introduced here. AND I will reveal to you what the word you should have extrapolated 18 lines above is! Steve Walker Earthsaver and Jingles Creator
© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.