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Language Vitality

The Death of a Language

The Guardian has an article on the death of the last Eyak speaker in Alaska. The headline says that the loss of this language is worse than bombing the Louvre. To my mind, it may be even worse than that. The loss of a language in analogous to the loss of a biological species. Languages encode human culture and insights in individual ways. More importantly, each language has a capacity to reflect and express unique things about the nature of God and losing a language, reduces humanity’s ability to explain and worship our creator.

2 replies on “The Death of a Language”

Whilst there is obviously a loss of linguistic diversity through language death and I can feel a degree of sentiment about it, I’m not entirely convinced that humanity’s ability to explain and worship God is significantly reduced. A similar argument is applied by those who wish to retain archaic words and forms of expression in Bible translation.
As one linguistic twig dies off so another branch is expanding. Clearly globalization means that linguistic diversity is being reduced and there is less division into new branches than formerly, but the increasing level of linguistic intercomprehension between people in widely separated geographic areas must mean that explanations and worship of the creator in remaining languages are better and more widely understood.
Nevertheless we absolutely must not neglect those who remain are in Biblical poverty, who are not yet able to know God more fully through his word in the language they understand best. Go Eddie, go Wycliffe!

Thanks for this, Eddie.

Paul, that’s a challenging statement. I am gung-ho for globalization but I tend to notice more of the detrimental effects than benefits when I look at the local level. Perhaps linguistically over time we will begin to see more benefits as well.

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