Brianna Taylor
Professor Hyon
Composition I
October 12,2016
Why do Languages Die? My first year as a student of KSU, I was told to take the Freshmen Seminar. There were many to choose from politics to culture. However, the one I decided to take was Cultures and Languages. I had always been interested in languages and always wondered why it was one of the most important features to humanity. Around the middle of the semester, me and my classmates were tasked to work in groups to explain the cons and pros of languages dying and how do they affect humanity. At first I was surprised, this was my first time hearing the words “languages die”. I never knew that languages could just die, this was a subject that I was never taught in grade school. No teacher I ever had brought this to my attention, no book, or etc. So I was one of the first students to pull out my computer and storm the doors of Google, begging for one simple answer. How could a student like me that is barely out the doors of High school, be able to justify the reason languages die. But with a few …show more content…
If a Gikuyu and a Giryama meet in Nairobi, they won 't likely speak each other 's mother tongue, but they very likely will speak one or both of the trade languages in Kenya — Swahili and English (Hieder). There is a possibility that their kids will learn a few words from their parent’s native language; however, by the third generation there will be no more traces of those languages will be likely gone. In other cases, extremely rural communities are drawn to the relatively easier lifestyle in cities, until sometimes entire villages are abandoned (Woodbury). Yet it is not a recent phenomenon. In history there are many cases of massive language die-off is doing the Agrarian Revolution/ Neolithic Revolution, where humanity began to adopted farming, abandoned the nomadic lifestyle, and created permanent settlements. And as these societies grew, so did
Professor Hyon
Composition I
October 12,2016
Why do Languages Die? My first year as a student of KSU, I was told to take the Freshmen Seminar. There were many to choose from politics to culture. However, the one I decided to take was Cultures and Languages. I had always been interested in languages and always wondered why it was one of the most important features to humanity. Around the middle of the semester, me and my classmates were tasked to work in groups to explain the cons and pros of languages dying and how do they affect humanity. At first I was surprised, this was my first time hearing the words “languages die”. I never knew that languages could just die, this was a subject that I was never taught in grade school. No teacher I ever had brought this to my attention, no book, or etc. So I was one of the first students to pull out my computer and storm the doors of Google, begging for one simple answer. How could a student like me that is barely out the doors of High school, be able to justify the reason languages die. But with a few …show more content…
If a Gikuyu and a Giryama meet in Nairobi, they won 't likely speak each other 's mother tongue, but they very likely will speak one or both of the trade languages in Kenya — Swahili and English (Hieder). There is a possibility that their kids will learn a few words from their parent’s native language; however, by the third generation there will be no more traces of those languages will be likely gone. In other cases, extremely rural communities are drawn to the relatively easier lifestyle in cities, until sometimes entire villages are abandoned (Woodbury). Yet it is not a recent phenomenon. In history there are many cases of massive language die-off is doing the Agrarian Revolution/ Neolithic Revolution, where humanity began to adopted farming, abandoned the nomadic lifestyle, and created permanent settlements. And as these societies grew, so did