3.1.3 Geographical Knowledge
According to Mark Aronoff’s Contemporary Linguistics, when hundreds of years ago the Spanish colonist came to North America, they heard beautiful names for rivers and mountains in native Indian words with melodic rhythm. Same time with the colonization native language is substituted. Decades after came the British colonist, another substitution, another language disaster. In native language geographical names often encoded with many features to designate its position and even weather and environment condition. For nomadic group few skills can be more useful than the ability to understand the weather and living condition of their to-be habitation.
3.1.4 National Identity
As the coming in of Linguistic imperialism, it attacked the native language as an inferior one and promoted the lingua franca. As time goes, under the day after day preaches of inferiority, it is hard to image the remaining of national pride and identity. People become less confident, consequently, conflict increases.
Though being the most difficult to be grasped, the loss of national identity actually, is the greatest and most remorseful loss. “Language is more than a shared code of symbols for communication. People do not fight and die, as they have done in India, to preserve a set of symbols. They do so because they feel that their identity is at stake—that language preservation is a question of human rights, community status and nationhood.”[2]
French have such an experience. “Yet cultural and linguistic diversity was an unproblematic fact of life in France until the 1790s, when in the aftermath of the French Revolution a need for a unifying national identity, expressed in part by a single national language, was rather suddenly perceived.”[9]
A treasure like language has a long memory. Through language, everything reflects to us. “Whether of prejudice, misunderstanding between nations, or of distort in history, conflicts in culture, or of the collision between conventions and traditions, in language, they all had its marks.”[3]
A loss in heritages of verbal arts, a change of lifestyle, disappearance of geographical knowledge, number system, and finally, the national identity, are truly tragedies for human beings. This is why preventing the loss of endangered languages set by linguistic imperialism is so important.
3.2 Disappearing languages endangered by English
As the definition goes, the dominance of English is asserted and maintained by inequalities between English and other languages. Thus, as there is inequalities there will be linguistic imperialism.
On the other hand, British English and American English both have their unshakable positions in all English varieties. Therefore, the affected languages would be discussed separately and the author would analyze it in geographical terms.
3.2.1 Languages Endangered by British English
Briton, once a colonist, implanted imperialism as well as exploitation. For such a historic reason, even in today’s world, the Great Britain overpowered other nations and manifested it in its language—the Briton English. What’s more, internet in modern society has an incomparable advantage. As the former UK premier Blair said: “There quarters of the world’s mail is written in English. Four fifths of the information stored on the world’s computers is in English. It is a huge potential advantage for Britain.”[10]
With such an advantage or inequality, British endangered other languages.
The United Kingdom contains the Great Britain and the Northern Ireland. Welsh, being part of the Great Britain, is also included in the UK and has been under the influences of British English.
Welsh had been affected by British English and experienced great loss, both in language positioning and the population who spoke Welsh. Thanks to the huge effort put by governments, scholars, welsh survived.
Irish, however, isn’t that lucky. Irish has gone through protests, even battles, but could not turn the wheel back. Irish, the language, is almost in grave now.
3.2.2 Languages Endangered by American English
US, the biggest power of the world, surely enjoys great prestigious in their language----American English.
In North America, “Of the estimated 154 tribal languages that still exist, 56 percent have only a few elderly speakers. The Indigenous Language Institute reports that 89 percent of all North American languages are in danger of extinction. Of 2 million American Indians, only 18 percent still speak their tribal language, and the vast majority of these are elderly.”[8]
From this saying we’ve already known the critic situation of endangered languages resulted from American English.
Oklahoma Indian Languages, as a Native American language, witnessed great disaster. Here is an example in reality about linguistic imperialism manifested on language endangerment that the author would like to share.
We cannot talk about language endangerment or revitalization without first acknowledging these historical origins. For example, by the time the Sauk people were removed to Oklahoma in 1867 they had experienced more than 200 years of migration, war, and disease. Despite all these changes and challenges the Sauk people still had their language when they made this last forced removal to a new land. Ultimately it was not military conquest, disease, or forced relocation that threatened our language but psychological warfare. In order to kill a language you must get inside someone’s head; you must break their spirit and their mind, not just their body. The health of a language depends upon parents who teach it to their children, and children who then grow up and teach it to their children. One cannot kill a language as long as children speak it. So to make children stop speaking the Sauk language the American government removed them from their families and taught them through violence, abuse, and shame that their language was evil, dirty, and inferior to English. [8] 转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net
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