When a Language dies...


David Harrison of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania said an immense storehouse of knowledge will disappear when a language dies. Linguists have therefore, been traveling all over the world to interview the last speakers of certain languages. Languages often trickle out of existence .Over the years, some languages have been deliberately exterminated by colonizers or aggressors taking over territory or waging genocide. Children, he said, may decide a language's fate by abandoning an ancestral tongue for another language they see as more widely used, for example, on television or in school. I believe parents are the catalysts and collaborators.

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