Translator: Giancarlo Castelo Alí Reviewer: Lisa Thompson
Hello, everyone. My name is Arjun Nagarajan.
I am a fellow student here at SWA.
And I am here today to talk about the global language
and language extinction.
So, how many of you people
know the number of different languages in the world?
According to statistics,
there are approximately 6,000 languages alive on Earth.
And out of this 6,000, how many do you think dominate?
Unfortunately, it turns out only less than 10 dominate.
Almost all languages go extinct
because their speakers get absorbed by the dominant languages.
There are many reasons for this absorption,
such as employment, opportunities, education,
but to put it in one word, survival.
Languages are usually of two types:
languages of instruction and languages of communication.
Languages of instruction are the language in which we get instructed in,
or we instruct something in.
Language of communication is the language we use
to convey our information and emotion to another person.
When our language of communication
slowly becomes a language that is not our mother tongue,
there is a possibility that our mother tongue
can eventually become endangered and extinct.
The extinction of a language is a very complex issue.
If you go to the UNESCO website,
you can see the list of languages that are considered to be endangered.
A language is known and considered to be endangered
if there are less than 5,000 people, alive, speaking it.
But you might ask me, "Why do we have to worry about language extinction?"
Well, according to an old African proverb,
"When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground."
In this case, the library means the old man's memories,
experience and knowledge.
If the death of this old man could bring about such great loss,
imagine what the death of a language could bring about.
When a person's language dies, his cultural identity dies,
his traditional skills die,
and this ultimately leads to the destruction of his history.
Let's take animals, for example, to simplify things.
Animals use sounds and movement to communicate with one another.
Let's take a leopard and a lion, here.
If a leopard wants to survive in lion territory,
I don't think it will try to learn the way lions communicate.
This is because animals live a life very close to nature
and have everything they need to survive.
But what about us?
We humans travel around the world to look for employment
or to simply just enjoy the beauty of different countries.
But by doing so, we're forced to learn new languages.
And thus, I think that this reduces our originality.
Let's go back to the leopard example.
If a leopard living in the lion territory feels hungry,
it will simply go and hunt for food to eat.
But can we do that?
No. I wouldn't recommend doing that.
Why? We can't go outside and hunt chickens, right?
So, we go to restaurants in the foreign country
and try to eat our food.
And in order to that, again,
we need to be able to communicate in their language,
and thus, we're forced to learn it.
And of course, when it comes to computers, we all started using a common language.
I'm pretty sure all of you have used them before.
All of you know them.
They're called emojis -
smileys, the sad face, angry face, you name it.
However, just by using emojis, we cannot stop language extinction.
Why? Because emojis fail to function
and fail to fulfill two of the basic functions of a language,
which are: 1) communication, 2) emotional release.
Emojis only support emotional release.
I mean, in real life, we cannot go outside and make everyday conversation
just by using facial expressions, right?
So ...
one idea is to have a global language
so that we do not need to use another language to communicate with one another.
Now, don't get me wrong here.
I'm not against learning another language,
but I'm certainly and strongly against the fact
that there are languages out there that are becoming extinct.
Now, before I go into the details and ideas I have for this global language,
I will explain the significant benefits we get by having such a language.
Firstly, there won't be any language barriers,
so anyone will be able to talk to anyone else in the world.
Secondly, there won't be any hesitation,
and there will be greater understanding between everyday conversations.
So we do not need to keep our feelings to ourselves.
Thirdly, this will help improve relationships
and help grow healthy relationships across country borders,
and thus contribute to economic growth.
How does it do that?
Well, I'll give you an example.
Businessmen nowadays travel around the world to make business deals,
and in order to do so, they usually have to be able to communicate
in the country's language.
And most of the time, they cannot.
And thus, they use a translator.
But, even though they are able to convey the information they want to,
they cannot do so
in a manner in which the emotions they want to be conveyed are properly conveyed.
Now, how the new language should be -
Firstly, this new language
should be able to provide the basic aspects each language has.
For example, words like "Google it" are used by a lot of people nowadays,
but they are not specific to any language.
The word Google itself was inspired from a young boy
using the word gazillion.
Secondly, this language should have less than 500 words.
I know you guys are surprised; you might think I'm crazy.
But this is possible.
Taki-Taki is a language spoken by 120,000 people
in the South American country of Suriname.
This language, surprisingly, only has 340 words.
They're able to convey every information we do with English
within that 340-word limit.
So that is the living proof that this is possible.
Now, how will this global language stop language extinction?
Well, first, when we learn this global language,
we make sure that we're not absorbed by different cultures,
and thus we reduce the risk of making a language become endangered and extinct.
But you guys may ask me, "What if this global language goes viral
and eventually everyone starts speaking it?
What if this global language actually causes extinction?"
The answer is not that it won't;
it is that it cannot.
This language is simply a tool for communication,
but not a language itself.
Plus, this language does not belong to a group or to any culture,
and thus cannot influence or hinder any other languages.
People around the world are absorbed by different languages
and cannot pay attention to their own culture and values,
and thus putting their languages at risk of becoming extinct.
I'd like to leave you guys with a quote today.
"Language tethers us to the world; without it, we would spin like atoms."
Thank you.