Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Whose fault is it if a language dies?
I thought it was interesting when we were talking about language death that usually it is spoken of in a passive term- i.e. "it died." However, I can see the reason why this is done- removing the agency from this sentence avoids the touchy subject of whose fault it is that the language died. Is it the policy makers' fault for not allowing for the minority languages to be as important as the majority ones? Or the minority speakers' fault for not choosing to speak their native language in every day life and not teaching it to their children?
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I didn't know how to edit my post and it posted before I was done so I guess I'll just comment on it...
ReplyDeleteIf the minority speakers themselves are to blame, can we really fault them for wanting their children and themselves to get ahead socially and economically by speaking the majority language? The concept of "ghettoization" of minority speakers seems very clear to me but the causality does not- is it that minority speakers are ghettoized for their language, or that they hold onto their language because they are ghettoized? Would switching to the majority language help get them out of the ghetto? It seems obvious that in America, in order to be successful, one needs to speak English, so it would reasonable that this holds in other places too.