Module 15 - I want to be able to talk with my grandmother

There’s no question about it: Native languages all over the Americas are in serious trouble; most of them are steadily decreasing in numbers of speakers and are undergoing the process of language shift, wherein speakers are switching over to English, Spanish, or Portuguese and aren’t teaching their kids their heritage languages. But this isn’t something that’s unique to the Americas. This is happening all over the world, and it’s estimated that by the end of this century at least half of all living languages will be extinct. 

Alright. So what?

Well, if you’ve made it this far in the course and you still don’t see a problem with languages that can be saved going extinct, then there isn’t much I can say to change your mind. But there are things we can all do to pitch in and help in our own ways. It seems like a lot of us come from a variety of different backgrounds where some people in our families still speak our heritage languages. I know that’s the case for me; my paternal grandfather’s first language is an archaic dialect of Albanian that’s reported as “threatened” by the Ethnologue, and most of my other family members speak our other heritage language: Italian. While what we’ve learned in Module 15 about immigrant populations and Native populations switching over to dominant languages like English and Spanish is true, all is not yet lost. Those of us that are fortunate enough to have living parents and grandparents that still speak our various heritage languages can make an impact if we so chose. Yes, learning a second language as an adult is difficult, but it’s not like we can depend on other people to save our heritage languages. As we discussed in the previous modules, if linguists and academics alone could save the world’s various endangered languages, then they’d already all be saved. So if you’re somebody with a threatened or endangered heritage language and you care about what happens to it, talk to your family members and see if you can learn it and bring it back as the main language of your household. Again, doing something like this is actually a pretty daunting task, but I know for certain that if I don’t even try to learn my grandfather’s dialect of Albanian before he dies I’ll never forgive myself.

Reference: Hale et al. 1992. Endangered Languages. Language, Vol. 68, No. 1 pp. 1-42