论语言领域的帝国主义对英语及其作用语之影响(英文)

3.  Urgency of Revitalization for Endangered Languages
Some would doubt that if linguistic imperialism provides human beings with a lingua franca and, as a result, makes international communications easier, then why linguists are against the English-only world? Why do they make a fuss about it and criticize linguistic imperialism? Isn’t that easier when we all speak the same language without communication obstacles? And why have there been protests against linguistic imperialism?
This presumption is logical only if the native language has not been erased by the invaded one. Nonetheless, this is not the case in linguistic imperialism. Endangerment of indigenous languages actually does happen.
3.1 Significance of the revitalization on endangered languages
Variable languages are based on entirely different histories, beliefs, scientific and natural-world knowledge, political ideas and moral values. Hence, native languages capture concepts that do not exist in English.
3.1.1 Heritages of Verbal Arts
There are two forms of language: speaking and writing. According to the already-proved research in Sandra Cornbleet and Ronald Carter’s The Language of Speech and Writing[6] , speech proceeded. In ancient times, when speech was the only way of communication, humans passed down wisdom and tradition through speech from generation to generation. When language dies, what will be left? Almost nothing. Sure, if ever our ancestors had carved paintings on walls, it set out some imaginations but nowhere can we find evidence to prove we get it right, no language as witness to say that our ancestors had exactly the same messages to convey. “The loss of a language also represents loss of human intellectual heritage, of all that could have been learned through that language about linguistic history, human values, cultural and verbal art, and oral literature.”[7]
Even in today’s world, many languages have only the oral form. Language literarily means the life thread for many isolated and nomadic tribes, who left merely a few tracks of their mysterious life.
What’s more, they may need language to convey the critical messages about how to survive in demanding environment, and pass the wisdom to their offspring. On the other hand, language could also be light fun. There are songs and poems that indicate the tribe’s leisure and recreation. Work or leisure, both desire for language. “When a language dies, everything that is attached to it----prayer, song, stories, dances, ceremonies, and every other aspect of tribal system----becomes more difficult to sustain.”[8] 
3.1.2 Lifestyle Change
 The time linguistic imperialism erased a native language, natives have to adopt the lingua franca----English, meanwhile, a new lifestyle, which may in conflict with their original one in almost every aspect. Concerned with linguistic imperialism, the new lifestyle also means the shaping of value beliefs and political system on the whole. For an instance, many underdeveloped countries were transformed into “democratic” countries with the “help” coming from US in most cases.

For instance in the immediate post-war years, Reader’s Digest, Time, and Life were provided with a substantial US government subsidy so as to assist their establishment in the European to American tastes and ideas. The same strategy has been successful in underdeveloped countries, where choices of informed reading matter tends to be restricted. ‘African intellectuals read Time and Newsweek’, is the terse comment from one eminent African. [1]

That’s exactly linguistic imperialism’s wish----affect on lifestyle to suit their tastes and ideas. Time and Newsweek become the sign and the indication of eminent African----that’s the strong influence of English on Africans. When Africans change their ways of branding themselves as “eminent” ones, their behaviors also changed. Such changes, sometimes means the death of certain moral values, devastate a nation’s spirit and soul.
Lifestyle also includes number counting system. Number counting system, as far as the author concerns, is the most concise and trick knowledge of human intelligence. Arabic number system earns its universal popular status for its easy drawing. We Chinese adopt the system but we never endanger our own numbers and more often, apply it in much former circumstances. Not all languages are lucky to retain their own counting systems. They have to deal with loss. As the author has mentioned in chapter 1, in Welsh, English was adopted when natives were naming numbers.
  This phenomenon is particularly evident in rounding numbers. Ten is the rounding number in China. Romans, according to Richard Ramsay’s New Zealand Mathematics, have “five” as their rounding number. They use V for 5, and X for10, while other numbers are merely transformed on the basis of them. Rounding number also in tens is English. Proved by reality and history, rounding number is the easiest and most convenient way for counting in accordance with each nation’s lifestyle. An endangered language affects number system, also jeopardizes lifestyle.转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net