Language Death

Presentation on my book " Language Death" by David Crystal

Choosing the book “Language Death” by David Crystal really helped me  to be aware of my own situation in language. I was born in west Africa and lived there for more than fifteen year before coming   to the U.S , my first welcome and challenge was the English language because, I have been  always proud of my native language Fulani( spoken in west Africa)  and French.

In his book, Crystal divided his book into five categories.

1)What  is language death? he introduces the problem of the increasing disappearance of most of the world's tongues and how they are classified.

2)Why should we care? this second chapter, explains the loss we face in the disappearance of each language. Crystal counters myths about language diversity. The existance of so many languages, he notes, is actually good for the market, for instead of fouling up capitalism, it creates competitive advantages when company A decides to deal with a minority group in its own language while company B thinks everyone should just learn English and consequently loses business.

3)Why do languages die? language death is not a new phenomenon, and Crystal considers a number of the historical reasons for languages to become extinct. One reason languages die is because their speakers die. For most of the history of humanity, people have lived in small isolated communities, each with its own language. Imagine the people in the next town speaking a language unintelligible to you, and likewise those in every other community surrounding yours speaking a different language. This has been the linguistic landscape for most of human history. A natural disaster, such as a tsunami or earthquake, a disease or famine, could  wipe out a whole community, and the language of that community would cease to exist. Another reason for language death is political. Any advance in technology or military organization could give one speech community an edge that they would use to conquer neighboring communities. This has happened repeated throughout history on larger and larger scales. Usually, the conquerors impose their language on those they conquer. example of this in the continent of Africa. Being from there, my country Guinea main language is French because of the fact that we were colonized by the French. 

4)Where do we begin? What can be done about this? Crystal looks first at general needs: gathering information, raising awareness (both in local communities and in the international community), and fostering positive community attitudes (sometimes people don't want to save their own language). Any approach must promote the authenticity of the whole community (accepting change and recognizing all dialects) and consider language as part of broader culture.

5)What can be done? He suggests several factors which will help the languages to survive. He said that speakers themselves can help the language to advance. They should increase their prestige and legitimate power within the dominant community as well as their wealth; speakers should have a strong presence in the educational system, ability to write down the language and make use of electronic technology.

Yule vs crystal

General concept

Yule emphasizes the formation, the origin, and how we study language while crystal’s main concern is the extinction of languages.

Similarities:

Cultural transmission- Yule only define this term which is “ when a language is pass from generation to generation”.  In language death” crystal points this term as a solution to prevent language death. 

They all agree that each language manifests a fresh coming-together of sounds, grammar and vocabulary to form a system of communication.

Am I a prescriptivist or  descriptivist?

Credit:languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu



I like to think of myself as a prescriptivist, but I'll admit it's difficult to avoid picking up language trends through osmosis. You can look at the history of any language and see the evolution of words and their meanings (and even their spellings) over periods of time. I suppose I would just prefer to avoid anything evolving too quickly.