The idea of several languages existing in the world we live in has always fascinated me. In the light of different cultures and races, there have been developed numerous ways to express thoughts through words and mannerisms. These variations just add to the depth and richness of being human. How a certain group of people who have evolved to look like each other have discovered their own ways of telling each other what they’re thinking, it’s become such a normalized phenomenon that we don’t even revel in just how wonderful it truly is.
In a lifetime, an average person knows about one or two languages. To find a group of people who speak the same ones as you is quite spectacular, but not treated as so merely because geography is the strongest factor affecting what language is spoken by a person. If someone migrates to a place, it is often a given minimum to must learn the language spoken there in order to fit in. Language is the foundation on which we build the connections we form with those around us through communication.
Since mother tongues are limited yet too many to exist, the speakers of certain ones that have seen a longer passage of time and space slowly become fewer and fewer. Eventually, when the last of the speakers of a certain language that isn’t widely known either by literature or cultural appropriations pass away, it goes extinct. We’ve all heard it on the news somewhere: the last person who spoke this language passed away, and no amount of records can bring it back, as no one can understand it, however hard they try to.
That is what intrigues me the most, that the minor rules and implications of any language have been set clearly. Any change to what it already is would be considered a mistake. Widely spoken languages are altered over the course of time, as we witness with English itself, how an older version of it existed, which was so prim and proper, and the one that we know of now in the present time is much more informal and slang-driven. But for those that are only spoken within small crowds, they die because the newer generation learn to speak globally understood languages in place of their own. It appears to be the main reason that languages go extinct.
India, a country of rich culture and a varied crowd, experiences the same issues. The generational passing of wonderful mother tongues has ceased in the pursuit of modernization. Another reason for this is the government’s neglect of languages, mostly spoken by tribal or rural communities, with only 22 languages recognized by the constitution out of more than 19,500 language variants.
Gondi language, which is natively known as Koitur, is spoken by around 3 million people in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana. It is a highly endangered language since it is only spoken by one-fifth of the Gonds. Due to this endangerment, the highly intricate knowledge of flora and fauna this language holds is not available in proper scientific literature, thus leading to a giant loss of something that could be a profitable venture in medicinal techniques.
Therefore, the death of a mother tongue can point to a heavy loss of precious knowledge that a community can bring to the globe. According to an evaluation performed by UNESCO, 71 languages are vulnerable to extinction, 63 are definitely endangered, 44 are severely endangered, and 19 are critically endangered.
The Andaman and Nicobar islands are considered the hotspots of extinct and endangered languages. Bo, a Great Andamanese language, presents a heartbreaking case of the effects that colonialism and modernization have on tribal linguistic traditions. The last fluent Bo-speaking woman, named Boa Sr., was born in the 1920s. In her lifetime, she witnessed the gradual death of her community’s traditions and culture. She took her last breath in 2010, and along with her so did the Bo language, an inevitable end of another indigenous mother tongue.
The preservation of history and culture to prevent it from being wiped out is essential since it accommodates the sense of belonging that every race should feel. Every community living within or outside of civilization deserves to feel proud of its spoken language and cultural practices.
The solutions to be explored to foster this sense of heritage are simple. To fight for the rights of mostly tribal or rural communities’ tongues, education in their languages should be included as part of their curriculum to ensure that the children are familiarized with their mother tongues without missing out on the global languages that shape the formation of the future. Representation of endangered languages in media and literature is also crucial to stop their extinction.
The most important solution, however, has to be the legal representation. This step, if taken by the government, can help minor communities feel included and promote their sense of pride and belonging. This small inclusion is their pathway for being able to honour their upbringing and the values of their ancestors.
Diversity needs to be protected. It is the single most important global phenomenon that represents the variety of people residing in this world. Every person’s freedom of speech ought to be protected and their cultures honoured. By providing solutions that nurture these endangered languages back into practice, we rebuild the world as it is meant to be. Distinguished and diverse.
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