Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
The above sentence made perfect sense, and it was grammatically perfect!
This sentence was created by William J. Rapaport in the University of Buffalo. Now let me explain to you what I mean by that sentence before we dive in to main topic of this article.
In the above sentence the word buffalo is used in form of a noun, as an animal, verb, and name of a city.
This is the meaning – “American Bison from Western New York State bully other American bison that happen also to reside in Western New York State”.
I believe you may have guessed how deep a language can be in terms of words; but what about the birth and the death of those languages we speak and those we don’t even know exist?
Globalization – the reason many languages and cultures have spread and dominated around the world on a global scale. Today nearly 7000+ languages are being spoken across the world at a given time.
But what is language?
Many of us would say , “It’s the way people encode and decode information with the influence of one’s culture” , whereas the rest may say, “It’s the way we communicate with one another through a common word of understanding”.
Languages just doesn’t have to be words that we use to converse with other person.
A simple smile, or a handshake is also the way we could communicate, also known as body language. BUT remember body language also comes with some rules. A simple gesture that seems innocent and convincing can mean something offensive in other cultures.
Knowledge about different languages is an essential medium that gives us the ability to communicate across various cultures. Understanding and being able to communicate in various languages widens our scope to narrow down the borders to perceive new cultures and understand other people better. Learning about various cultures increases our understanding of ourselves and our neighboring cultures. As we start settling into the 21st century, English is becoming dominant language that is being widely spread and has become a common word of understanding.
Over the century, the English language has without a doubt achieved a global status as many countries adopt the language they consider to be synonymous with the economic and cosmopolitan culture. Imagine I typed this article in Hindi, Japanese or Italian! Majority of you all wouldn’t be able to read what I typed without a translation. I am using English language as a common medium of communication that we as educated individuals learn and perceive. The spread of English as a language of international business has made it important for people to understand each other and form an effective and productive relationship.
This change in the economic culture has forced schools and collages to adopt the medium of their institution as English and shape the students linguistic abilities to compete with the business world.
Adopting a foreign language as the dominate language changes the cultural attitudes we develop from our mother tongues. Through foreign language and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook. But we forget to be the repositories of the culture and identity we are born with.
What about the other side of the coin? What is happening to all the other languages?
As we learn new dominant languages we also adopt new cultures, in this process we forget our cultural languages and over the years those languages are spoken less and eventually become extinct. Most languages today are becoming a hybrid of two or more languages often reflecting the changing values of the culture,
This isn’t a myth, researchers say that by the end of this century 90% of 7000+languages will become endangered or extinct. This is becoming a concern that lead to studies.
Here are some of the reasons to why languages are becoming extinct:
1. The Speaker Population –
When languages that are spoken in a specific and small populated culture, the number of speakers are less, so over time people who use local cultural languages to converse and connect themselves to their ethnic identity and fail to inherit the same speaking culture, leads to the extinction of that language with the death of their last speaker.
2. Official Recognition of the Language –
This is one of the major reasons why people prefer using languages like English to communicate with people and businesses as most of the cultural languages are not officially recognized. Therefore, people are forced to learn foreign languages to sustain in a business environment
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3. Online Media as a Means of Transmission –
Most websites, blogs, websites use English as a major language for connecting and communicating with the world. Dudu was the worlds first multilingual social network that allowed people to chat and share content in their own language over the web to others who may or may not share the same language. Dudu utilizes Dudu translate as their translation system to translate phrases of one language to another.
This has enabled people to connect with others who don’t share the same language and who don’t share the same culture. This system has created a medium to narrow down barriers of communication affected by language and culture.
We as human beings should learn to become multi-linguistic and adhere to their linguistic cultures. It will create a better understanding among people and culture differences can be minimized.
But is one universal language across the world such a bad thing after all?
That’s something we will leave for another day!
I will conclude by saying,
Language is power, life, and the instrument of culture, instrument of domination and liberation.
Anonymous Explorer 