All languages are always changing, they evolve and like any evolution, sometimes, languages die.
There are many causes why any language can be extinct for example wars when several members of a society die or must move to some other places and, this also happens with natural disasters or illness (and of course, the lost of a language is not the worst part of a catastrophe). It can be possible that the remaining speakers when they are mixed with another society they have to, adapt to a new way of interaction and therefore stop speaking their native language. There are some documented cases where a population decides to change their language (the case of the Yaaku).
A language can only have little changes and after a long period of time develop unrecognizable. There are some other factors like cultural and economic pressure, this is produced because sometimes people think children won’t have opportunities to succeed if they talk a language different of the economic elite or they think they culture is less than the one they want to have, a disadvantage of the homogenous globalized world.
In most cases, this pressure is the main reason of the extinction of languages spoken by few people in developing regions. –When I was reading about the extinction of languages I found in yahoo answers the next: “And if Mexico Changed his official language for English?”, by the way, the lady that asked that question chose as the best answer one that was agree with her-. Sometimes we forget that there are many other factors of discrimination like color, religion, even the accent of the way of talking, etc., etc., etc.
It’s a fact that according to the UNESCO in every two weeks one language dies of approximately 7000 different languages in the world and with it dies also recipes, history, songs, music, legends, a heritage for the world.
In Mexico, Spanish is not the official language (although is spoken by approximately 99% of the population); there are recognized 68 linguistic groups that come from 11 different linguistic families and conforming 364 variants of native languages. The country is one on the eight countries of the world that concentrate a half of all languages together with Papua New Guinea (820), Indonesia (742), Nigeria, India, USA, Cameroon, Brazil –I must say that the numbers in parenthesis are obtained from a page not recently updated-.
Also in Mexico, there are approximately 20 languages endangered, some of them are spoken by less than 100 individuals (Seri, Kikapu, Aguacateco, Cohimi-Yumana, Kiliwa, Cucapá) an extreme case is the Mijezoque (variant of Zoque, the Zoques call themselves “men of word”). In Ayapán, Tabasco, a province in the southeast of Mexico, live the last two zoque speakers men, after a dispute these old men stopped talking each other. “They are not enemies but they are distanced. We know that they are 2 people with few things in common” said Fernando Nava from the National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI).
The language is now recorded and the INALI tries to encourage these two old men to talk Mijezoque with their families and community. Humboldt, during one exploration to Central America found the Atures, a tribe that he wanted to visit; but it had been extinct by the Caribes. Only one old parrot survived and this animal could sing a song in Atur. Humboldt spent a lot of time trying to figure out the words and he rescued 40 perhaps deformed by the parrot but thanks to that now we know something about the Atures.
A Mexican written Carlos Montemayor said “If the native don’t get something by their own nobody will give then for mercy or solidarity”
The spacecraft Voyager used to study the cosmic space carries a message in phonograph record that contains sounds and images portraying the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan. They assembled images, a variety of natural sounds, musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth in fifty-five languages including several dead ones. Instructions use symbolic language to describe the origin of the spacecraft and to explain how the record is to be played.
It will be forty thousand years before the Voyager approaches another planetary system. As Carl Sagan had noted, “The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.”
If you want to hear the greetings in these languages, this is the link.
The source of the information reflected in this blog comes from the links below. I hope you could enjoy reading this as I enjoyed writing it (in English).
There are many causes why any language can be extinct for example wars when several members of a society die or must move to some other places and, this also happens with natural disasters or illness (and of course, the lost of a language is not the worst part of a catastrophe). It can be possible that the remaining speakers when they are mixed with another society they have to, adapt to a new way of interaction and therefore stop speaking their native language. There are some documented cases where a population decides to change their language (the case of the Yaaku).
A language can only have little changes and after a long period of time develop unrecognizable. There are some other factors like cultural and economic pressure, this is produced because sometimes people think children won’t have opportunities to succeed if they talk a language different of the economic elite or they think they culture is less than the one they want to have, a disadvantage of the homogenous globalized world.
In most cases, this pressure is the main reason of the extinction of languages spoken by few people in developing regions. –When I was reading about the extinction of languages I found in yahoo answers the next: “And if Mexico Changed his official language for English?”, by the way, the lady that asked that question chose as the best answer one that was agree with her-. Sometimes we forget that there are many other factors of discrimination like color, religion, even the accent of the way of talking, etc., etc., etc.
It’s a fact that according to the UNESCO in every two weeks one language dies of approximately 7000 different languages in the world and with it dies also recipes, history, songs, music, legends, a heritage for the world.
In Mexico, Spanish is not the official language (although is spoken by approximately 99% of the population); there are recognized 68 linguistic groups that come from 11 different linguistic families and conforming 364 variants of native languages. The country is one on the eight countries of the world that concentrate a half of all languages together with Papua New Guinea (820), Indonesia (742), Nigeria, India, USA, Cameroon, Brazil –I must say that the numbers in parenthesis are obtained from a page not recently updated-.
Also in Mexico, there are approximately 20 languages endangered, some of them are spoken by less than 100 individuals (Seri, Kikapu, Aguacateco, Cohimi-Yumana, Kiliwa, Cucapá) an extreme case is the Mijezoque (variant of Zoque, the Zoques call themselves “men of word”). In Ayapán, Tabasco, a province in the southeast of Mexico, live the last two zoque speakers men, after a dispute these old men stopped talking each other. “They are not enemies but they are distanced. We know that they are 2 people with few things in common” said Fernando Nava from the National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI).
The language is now recorded and the INALI tries to encourage these two old men to talk Mijezoque with their families and community. Humboldt, during one exploration to Central America found the Atures, a tribe that he wanted to visit; but it had been extinct by the Caribes. Only one old parrot survived and this animal could sing a song in Atur. Humboldt spent a lot of time trying to figure out the words and he rescued 40 perhaps deformed by the parrot but thanks to that now we know something about the Atures.
A Mexican written Carlos Montemayor said “If the native don’t get something by their own nobody will give then for mercy or solidarity”
The spacecraft Voyager used to study the cosmic space carries a message in phonograph record that contains sounds and images portraying the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan. They assembled images, a variety of natural sounds, musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth in fifty-five languages including several dead ones. Instructions use symbolic language to describe the origin of the spacecraft and to explain how the record is to be played.
It will be forty thousand years before the Voyager approaches another planetary system. As Carl Sagan had noted, “The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.”
If you want to hear the greetings in these languages, this is the link.
The source of the information reflected in this blog comes from the links below. I hope you could enjoy reading this as I enjoyed writing it (in English).
http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/worldlanguages.htm
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/ultima/7000/elpepiult/20080429elpepiult_1/Tes
http://que.hoymujer.com/famosos/el-otilleo/unicos,herederos,lengua,zoque,44239,11,2007.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/latin_america/newsid_7097000/7097944.stm
http://www.tabascohoy.com.mx/nota.php?id_nota=134374
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2005/02/18/048n1cul.php
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lengua_muerta
http://www.inali.gob.mx/catalogo2007/
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