How Language Die

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Language is a system of arbitrary learned symbols which enables people to transmit and store information. As time flies by, there has been and still is issues of language being killed (certain languages becoming extinct). Researchers, Salikoko Mufwene and Miroslav Cerny put together articles on How Languages Die and Language Survival: A Global Perspective. According to Mufwene, the causes or drivers of “language death” are; the loss of critical mass by the population of the language’s speakers and when there is serious eroding of the language’s structures by the structures of the prevailing language. Mufwene further explains that language dies because, “speakers shift away from them as they would do other available tools, with the difference …show more content…
In South Africa, the N|u language is suffering great extinction because, according to the video, only 10 people in South Africa speak the language. The death of their language started when the white people came to their country and asked them to speak Afrikaans because they didn’t understand the N|u language and they it was an ugly language. The three elders in the video that talked about the death of their language expressed worry on the fact that anyone who speaks the language that dies and is covered in the ground with dirt, that is the death of their language. They are worried for the young ones that do not want to learn the N|u language because they think it’s “ugly”. They hope that the young ones take some form of interest in the language to prevent it from dying. This really matters to them because N|u is the language of their ancestors, it’s their native language, and it will be dead in no …show more content…
This started when the Chinese moved to their village and the Thao people had to learn and speak chinese in order to get jobs. In Taiwan 21 people speak Chinese, 15 people speak Thao, and 1 person speaks Pazih. The 1 person that speaks Pazih is 92 years old, which means that if other people, younger people, do not learn this language it will be dead permanently as this elderly woman doesn’t have a long time on earth. This old lady tries her very best to get people to come learn the Pazih language for free, but it is to no avail because the young ones do not care about learning their ancestors language. They are interested in the flashy and trendy things of life and what goes on in the society. The Thao language speakers also try their best to teach the language because they are worried it will die out and it will be forgotten quickly. They go to the lengths of promoting Thao language free lessons in the streets, this shows how worried they are about the death of their language and its
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