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  • Essay / Discussion of whether we should try to preserve endangered cultures and their languages ​​

    In this essay, we will delve deeper into the question; “Should we try to preserve endangered cultures and their languages? we will look at the arguments for and against and how they are affected. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get an Original Essay A disappearing culture is the practices, ideas, and customs of people in society that begin to disappear because that they lose their believers and their new traditions. and the practices introduced, this causes the disappearance of cultures which are disappearing and the languages ​​they use are also disappearing alongside them. Examples include traditional old Welsh words, traditional rainforest tribes, the Inuksuit people of northwest Greenland,2 the Vilyui Sakha, the indigenous horse and cattle herders of the Vilyui River region in the north -eastern Siberia.3 Some of the arguments for preserving endangered cultures and their languages ​​are: in a way, they preserve our past and keep us connected to our ancestors, their cultures are their beliefs and these are what make these people in cultures belong together, it is said that the cultures that they follow are disappearing and they feel that by losing that, they are also losing part of their identity. Some of the arguments against are: they are out of fashion in a modern world, the language used by disappearing cultures is not necessary in a world which has its main languages ​​e.g. Old Welsh, our wildlife and our environment are much more important to preserve than endangered cultures. The first FOR the preservation of endangered cultures is that cultures allow people to protect their homes even if they are an isolated group. For example, nature.com states: “A small, isolated group of humans with no vote or voice is as valuable for conservation as an endangered species. A country like Ecuador stands to gain by protecting both intact ecosystems and cultures through non-intervention policies akin to those used for endangered species. »4 This means they help each other protect their home and its environment. through protests or if they live in the wild, like traditional rainforest tribes, making it known that they live there and the land should not be damaged. It's about preserving endangered cultures because cultures bring people together creating community, but it also gives them a common goal such as protecting rainforests or each other. The first AGAINST preserving endangered cultures is that endangered cultures are ill-equipped for the modern world. For example, rainforest cultures would be ill-equipped for the modern world because they live in the rainforest, they were not raised within society and therefore live very isolated lives and grow old without experiencing the modern world , which means they have an idea of ​​everything. new discoveries such as advanced medicines and technologies e.g. mobiles, computers, iPads, speakers. This makes them unable to rejoin the modern world, because if the rainforests ended up being completely destroyed by man because of their energy plagues, they would be because they would not understand this technology and would not be able to function at its sides. . The second FORpreservation of disappearing cultures is that it brings people together, this is shown in Tom Belt's story that his tribe's language is not taught to the younger generation and he is a minority among his people who can speak Cherokee, this language brought him and his wife together because she was shocked when they met to know that he knew the language and could speak it clearly, she had told him there At age 20, "what attracted her to me was that I was the youngest Cherokee she had ever met, someone who could speak Cherokee." This shows that even for someone the same culture than him, Cherokee is a language that is not spoken, so this makes Tom understand that he was only one person in 400 who still speaks Cherokee in the eastern band of the tribe Until now,. people who speak this language are at risk of extinction and it is not the only language under threat “In the last century alone, around 400 languages ​​– about one every three months – have disappeared, and most of them linguists. estimate that 50% of the world's 6,500 remaining languages ​​will have disappeared by the end of this century (some estimate this figure to be high). 90% though). Today, the ten most widely spoken languages ​​in the world represent approximately half of the world's population. Can linguistic diversity be preserved or are we on the verge of becoming a monolingual species? but also at least “100 people in the world have only a handful of speakers”, this varies “from Ainu in Japan to Yagna in Chile”. It can also be difficult to find these people due to their low numbers. In some famous cases such as "Marie Smith Jones died in Alaska in 2008, taking the Eyak language with her", however, these are usually older people who do not report their language skills. The second AGAINST preserving endangered cultures is that there is no point in trying to preserve a language where the younger generation from that culture/language prefers a more popular language like English. An example of this would be that the Pitkern speakers of the Pitcairn Islands and the Norfolk Islands in the South Pacific only have 500 people speaking it, the rest of the population is more interested in speaking other languages, for example: " Younger speakers increasingly prefer English, and many of them move to New Zealand or other English-speaking countries. Even the small version of Wikipedia in the Pitkern language has been proposed for closure twice. This shows that more and more people do not wish to maintain their own cultural languages, so why should we try to preserve these languages ​​if their own practitioners do not wish to keep them alive in their daily lives because they are interested more to the most diverse languages. popular languages ​​around. However, some linguists believe that losing a language is equivalent to losing a species. For example, linguist James Crawford says that "when languages ​​die, the world loses four big things: linguistic diversity, intellectual diversity, cultural diversity, and cultural identity." FOR the preservation of endangered cultures and their languages, this is because language is an important part of society because it allows people to communicate and express themselves with others. For a person, being able to express themselves is an important aspect because it makes them who they are and without language it is easier for a culture in danger of disappearing. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, “according to the facts published in its “Atlas of Languages ​​in Danger of Disappearance”, it is estimated that today there are.