Dying Languages,

How to Preserve
Them.
How the human race can preserve our dying
languages from extinction.
By: Alexander Basinger

What are Dying

and Extinct

Languages

Dying Language: A language

that has fewer than 1,000
speakers left in the entire world.
Extinct Language: A language
that has no fluent speaker left
in the world.
Revised Language: These are
languages that have evolved
with the human race, adapting
its self to fit in modern times.
Some examples of these are
Ancient Greek, and Latin.

Why We have to Preserve our

Languages
Language is the foundation that humans have built all
innovations, as well society. Without language there
would be no way for you and I to communicate, and
without that way to communicate there's no way for
ideas to be shared. Meaning that all the technology that
we have today would not exist. Also ideas are not only
innovation, there also culture, philosophy, and
expression. These simple ideas gave us the ability to
build the foundation for modern society. With modern
society on the rise around the entire world ideas and
cultures have been passed along pretty easily, and long
with these so have languages. However do to this need
for worldwide communication, some languages have
been dying off since no one is speaking them any more.

This is a map of
all the
endangered
languages in
the world.

How to Preserve our Dying

Languages
As you saw from the previous slide, there many languages
that are on the verge of extinction. Of the 6,500-7000
languages on planet earth, many predict that by the end
of the century. Some of these languages that are
endangered only have around five fluent speakers left in
the entire world. Meaning, many Linguistics (Someone
who studies languages), have been scrambling to record
all these dying languages for future generations. The
main methods for recording these language, are through
dictionaries as well as auditory dictionaries. Some other
methods that people as well as some governments are,
websites and YouTube videos.

Dictionary

The most common way of preserving

a language is the dictionary.

A Language dictionary usually

consist of the words, and there
translation into the another language
There are also sentences in the
language, to show how the word is
being used
A language dictionary is quite a
helpful tool to help a person to learn
how to write in a new language
However a language dictionary only
covers one part of a language, the
written part
Meaning that a person has no idea
how to say a word properly

Auditory Dictionary
At least 696 languages in the world
have no written form
This means that a regular dictionary
can not be used for the
conservation for those types of
languages
Luckily recording of languages has
become common practice, and
many Linguistics have have started
recording dying languages as well
An Audio recording covers for all the
weak spots that a dictionary have,
and vise-versa
However with the aid of modern
technology other solutions have
arisen

Websites
Websites for languages learning,
have not been around for not
that long
They are a combination of both
a regular dictionary as well as
audio recordings
Another advantage of websites
is that it can be accessed by
anyone, giving it a far larger
advantage to the regular
methods of recording languages
One of the few problems that
online language websites have
is that some have paid
memberships

YouTube
YouTube as all of certainly
know is a website that a
person can up-load videos
for the entire world to see
YouTube is a fantastic
resource for language
preservation, since can
combined a regular
dictionary as well as audio
recording, and also add a
visual element
Another advantage that
YouTube has is that it is an

My I-Search Experience
I have always been fascinated with language after my
trip to China. When I was younger I always wondered
how language started, and why there was such a
variety to the sounds of languages. Later in my life I
learned that the variety of language because of the
geography of the world, and I think that there's no
define answer for why language started. I think around
the fifth grade I learned that some languages were
going instinct, I wanted to know why these languages
were dying for, what purpose did it serve. I did some
research when I was younger, but I never really went
in-depth into how we could preserve our dying
languages. But I was given that opportunity through
the I-Search paper so I grateful that I could do a paper

Conclusion
In My opinion, while the regular
dictionary and audio recording are
good, I think we should move more
towards the online language learning
I think both YouTube and language
websites are both valid option,
however I lean more towards
YouTube
YouTube gives the operation
capability of all the other options,
and it also has a greater
entertainment value to it, making
learning a little more interesting
YouTube also has the capability to
spread the awareness of the problem
of dying languages, giving it a large
lead in front of the other options

References
http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/
https://books.google.com/books
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/endang
ered-languages
/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRDmRXCizEM
http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/many-spokenlanguages.html
http://www.ethnologue.com/enterprise-faq/how-many-l
anguages-world-are-

Thank You, For

Dying
Languages
Your Time.
Hope You Enjoyed it.