One of our ToK reading assignments was an article titled "Half of the world's languages under threat". As the title implies, the article is about languages that are disappearing, especially those that are spoken by the minorities.
One person mentioned in class that she thinks that it's okay for those languages to disappear because they have lost their function. If less people spoke that language, less people will be able to understand that language and it will gradually be useless to speak that language. I strongly disagree with that person. I think language is not just a mean of communication, it also represents the identity of the speakers and their identity.
For example, many Chinese dialects such as Hokkien and Teochew are less spoken in the younger generation because, one, they can only be taught orally; two, the younger generation learn and speak Mandarin in school; and three, one can only improve one's proficiency in dialects through daily speaking. It is a shame, or maybe even shocking, that one should accept wholeheartedly the disappearance of one's language. It would be as if saying that I'm a Hokkien descendant but I know nothing about my dialect because I choose to neglect it and let it disappear.
Knowledge issues that can be discussed are: should a language be preserved if less than 1% of the world's population speaks it? What are the reasons for a language to be preserved?
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