In the city of Sanjiazi, located in northeast China, the language of Manchu only has about 70 native speakers left. The language initially gained very high prestige during the Qing dynasty. It was used as the primary language of the Qing Imperial court. However, the Manchu ethnic group either gradually lost influence in government or shifted to Mandarin Chinese. After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, no new documents were recorded in the Manchu language and all existing documents were kept in archives.During the formation of the People's Republic of China, many more ethnic Manchus gave up their language for Mandarin Chinese. Currently, there are about 10 million ethnic Manchus who do not know their native language.
Many aspects of the Manchu culture will disappear if the language dies. Even now, cities which have been inhabited by ethnic Manchus have torn down the old Manchu architecture, replacing it with Chinese style brick buildings. Many other traditions of the culture have already been lost. The remaining speakers are making a conscious effort to pass the language to their children, but they realize their hopes of preserving the language for a long period of time are very thin.
For more information, visit
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/world/asia/16iht-manchu.4935046.html
Monday, October 12, 2009
Ideal conditions for saving a language
About half of the world's 7000 language are projected to disappear within the next century. Twenty Percent of these are already moribund (not being effectively passed on to the next generation). With these statistics, it would seem that language death is a dire issue and that mankind must make an effort to save all these languages. However, there just are not enough resources to save each and every one. Thus, language preservation projects should prioritize languages which require minimal effort and cost to save.
A few criteria that measure whether a language is worth saving are the number of speakers remaining and their personal feelings towards preserving their native tongue. Endangered languages which still have at least a few thousand speakers are a lot easier to save with than ones which only have a few hundred. The difference is very significant considering that the higher population while have an exponentially higher rate of reproduction and potentially more children to pass the language onto. The other consideration - the speakers' attitude - is also important because speakers which are not motivated to keep their language (whether it is because of economic opportunities in other languages or the high prestige of another language) will want to resist passing their language to their offspring. In these situations, both the effort and possible cost of motivating speakers to maintain their language does not outweigh the end reward.
A few criteria that measure whether a language is worth saving are the number of speakers remaining and their personal feelings towards preserving their native tongue. Endangered languages which still have at least a few thousand speakers are a lot easier to save with than ones which only have a few hundred. The difference is very significant considering that the higher population while have an exponentially higher rate of reproduction and potentially more children to pass the language onto. The other consideration - the speakers' attitude - is also important because speakers which are not motivated to keep their language (whether it is because of economic opportunities in other languages or the high prestige of another language) will want to resist passing their language to their offspring. In these situations, both the effort and possible cost of motivating speakers to maintain their language does not outweigh the end reward.
Application of critical thinking to LING 115
As outlined in "The Perry Model of Intellectual and Ethical Development," critical thinking is the practice of forming context-appropriate decisions in the realm of uncertainty. Uncertainty exists whenever facts and hard knowledge do not exist regarding a specific topic. All of the social issues courses (including LING 115) are based on contemporary issues in which no solution shares a complete consensus, thus individuals must apply critical thinking in forming a personal perspective of the issues.
In the linguistics 115 course, students must be able to make sense of the ambiguous processes of language development. It was stated in the first class that languages are not defined by formulaic linguistic properties but rather by variable social and economic factors. There is not enough hard evidence to develop a solid theories of how varieties of speech gain the status of a language. The mutually intelligibility hypothesis is a good attempt, but it is contradicted by many real life scenarios. The information presented in this course does not consist of only raw facts, but also ideas such as language preservation which have a high degree of uncertainty. As such, It is absolutely necessary necessary for students to think critically in order to fully grasp the course material.
In the linguistics 115 course, students must be able to make sense of the ambiguous processes of language development. It was stated in the first class that languages are not defined by formulaic linguistic properties but rather by variable social and economic factors. There is not enough hard evidence to develop a solid theories of how varieties of speech gain the status of a language. The mutually intelligibility hypothesis is a good attempt, but it is contradicted by many real life scenarios. The information presented in this course does not consist of only raw facts, but also ideas such as language preservation which have a high degree of uncertainty. As such, It is absolutely necessary necessary for students to think critically in order to fully grasp the course material.
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