1.2.1 Examples as a Definition
In the work Vanishing Language, David Crystal has a theory over language endangerment. He used his own experience as an example.
I meet this phenomenon every day on the Welsh island of Anglesey, where I live. It’s becoming quite usual to hear locals referring to large sums of money in anything “Mae’s twelve fifty” (it’s twelve fifty), where the first part of the sentence is colloquial Welsh and the second part is colloquial English. As I waited for a train at the station the same day, I heard a porter calling out to disgruntled passengers “Mae’s late” (it’s late). And I later overheard a group of people using the English word injection as they stood in a street describing in Welsh someone’s visit to a doctor’s clinic. In all these cases, perfectly good Welsh words already exist, but the speakers did not use them. Why they choose not to is not at all clear. Maybe they did not know the Welsh words, or maybe it is a sign of status or education to use the English equivalents. But when something as basic as its number system is affected, a language is clear in danger. [2]
That is to say, when vocabularies of foreign languages are adopted by a large amount of people, instead of using the ones that existed in their native languages, native language is endangered.
As in the example, in Welsh, the expression for “twelve fifty” and “injection” existed. While the natives use English to convey their message. And not only just between the two Welsh mentioned above, growing number of people are performing the same. They replaced their basic vocabulary system. In so doing, the expression in Welsh was gradually lost, or, erased by the great imperialist--English.
There is also another belief about language endangerment. Some hold the view that endangered languages are actually inferior to the well-preserved ones. Language is in losing for it has already been obsolete and has been eliminated by time—the final judge. Language endangerment, ultimately, fit the Darwinism. The author disagrees. The absurdity of this view is that it put ranks on language. Languages are not, in themselves, more or less superior. “There are cultures civilized and not, however, there are not any differences in advancement or primitive, but only structural differences, over language.” [3]
1.2.2 Differences between Borrowing and endangerment
Considering the topic “language endangerment”, some would wonder why it should be called endangering but not borrowing. Borrowing also takes the abroad sayings during their speech. To illustrate, karaoke is a borrowed expression from Japanese in English. Why do linguists name such a saying “borrowing”? The author would like to analyze such a problem by presenting received theories to distinguish endangerment form borrowing.
According to James Baldwin’s example in quotation 2, the author would like to audaciously assume that: borrowing distinguishes from endangerment in two aspects. Firstly, if in language 1 there is no expression for the reference of a certain object, while language 2 has it, language 1 borrowed it and adopted it to supplement their existing vocabulary, and it is called “borrowing”. Secondly, both in language 1 and language 2 we have an expression for the certain object. Speakers of language 1 use these two expressions alternatively. In the above case, it is named “borrowing” as well.
Whereas in “endangerment”, neither language 1 nor language 2 is lack of a certain saying, however, speakers of language 1 choose the expression in language 2 over their mother tongue. That is to say, the loan words tend to replace words that already exist. Here, the phenomenon is referred to as “endangerment”.
“Borrowing” showed the eclectic character of language, which obviously is a positive factor during the procession of growth and elaboration of language. The author would take English as an example. It showed the greatest eclectic charisma. From the day it came into existence, English expands its vocabulary, elaborates its grammar rules by learning and borrowing from German, French, Greek, Latin, Japanese, Chinese, and etc. However, considering “endangerment”, it is definitely on a downing road. Being endangered, language begins the journey of decay, instead of growth, as in “borrowing”.
From the distinguishing between borrowing and endangering, we are able to deduce that language endangerment apparently would cause the disappearance of languages.
2. Linguistic Imperialism manifested in Language Endangerment
In this chapter we will touch upon the way linguistic imperialism applied in exerting its influence. Here are two terms: superstratum and substratum.
Superstratum influence is the effect of a politically or culturally dominant language on another language or languages in the area. For example, Norman French had a superstratum influence over Middle English.
Substratum influence is the effect of a politically or culturally nondominant language on a dominant language in the area. To illustrate, Celtic, at early times, influenced English in a substratum manner. Place names such as Thames, London are both come in this way. 转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net
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