Forever Language

There are roughly 2,000 languages spoken in Africa’s fifty-three countries. About 40% of these are spoken by communities of less than 5,000 people, and about 70% of these are spoken by less than 100,000 people. It is important to note that just because a language has a small number of speakers does not mean it is endangered, but often this may be the case in Africa. Language death is inevitable for many of these African languages. The question is will they become extinct in a hundred years, or thirty?

Why do Languages Die?

Languages die for a multitude of reasons. The most common cause likely being the pressure weaker languages experience from more powerful or prestigious languages. This pressure may be caused by demographic, socio-economic, political, and various cultural situations. Many African language die gradually, meaning that the speakers of the language slowly shift to speaking another languages until the first language has become extinct. In many of these situations, minority language speakers want to identify themselves with the majority language speakers to better themselves socially and economically, so they simply stop speaking their mother tongue, and begin trying to speak the new, more powerful language. If a mother feels that her child will not be benefitted by learning her mother tongue, then she may not choose to teach her child that language and will instead insist that they learn an ex-colonial language or regional lingua franca. If a child feels ashamed of their mother tongue, they will find a way to stop speaking it. Because so many of Africa’s languages are spoken by small, and often poor populations, these pressures pose a very real threat to them.

What Do We Lose When a Language Becomes Extinct?

It seems evident that many indigenous languages will decline and potentially become extinct if African countries decide to have only one or two official languages. The loss may be great if we lose these indigenous languages, many of which do not have writing systems. When languages die we lose information. We lose information about the history of the language speakers. We lose information about their beliefs, hopes, and dreams. Many of the African languages at risk are indigenous and are spoken only by small tribes and communities.

Many of these smaller populations live off the land, making them experts on native plant and animal species. It could be possible that these indigenous tribes know cures for diseases that the Western world does not. Perhaps there is a particular plant that grows near their villages that cures some fatal disease. When we lose their language, we lose this information. There are countless reasons linguists and scientists want to preserve and document as many of the world’s languages as they can. However, with one language going extinct every two weeks, it seems an impossible task, especially since many of these languages at risk do not have writing systems.

Many Dying Languages

According to Ethnologue.com, there are 136 dying languages in Africa. There are, however, many other African languages already at risk of extinction, and with a drastic move like forcing one or two official languages on a country, the number would drastically increase. While the extinction of an African language spoken by only two people is inevitable, it seems a waste for one spoken by 50,000 people to decline.

#endangeredlanguage #Africa #extinct

Learning a new language can be good for many reasons. Whether you are studying French, Spanish, or Chinese, learning a new language can be difficult. Here are some methods that worked for me, which I hope you will find useful. Before you know it, you'll be dreaming in your new language!

1. Don't only memorize vocabulary.

The beginning language learner should aim for functional communication. Knowing 100 nouns in Italian is nearly useless if you cannot give your words action. Many language learning resources will have you believe that being able to say "The ball is under the car," is an important lesson for beginners. I disagree. There are many more functional phrases the beginning speaker should learn first. As your functional communication skills increase, filling in the holes along the way will become easier and easier.

Hypothetical Scenario: You just found out that you have to fly to Germany tomorrow and you don't speak a single word of German. You only have time to study a few words in German before you have to leave. Which word list below should you choose to study?

List A: plane, food, sleep, money, passport

List B: want, have, go, is, need

In this case and in most cases, I recommend studying List B. Consider being in Germany after studying List A. You can say five words. That's it. Conversation stops there because all you have done is said a single word, after which no further message can be added.

Now look at List B. You can use the single word "want" to convey that desire about any number of objects in a German souvenir shop. Body language is similar across many cultures (though I recommend looking into this further before traveling to avoid potentially offensive gestures). Learning to say "need" offers you the opportunity to gesture that you need sleep or food.

Of course, this is a hypothetical scenario. To fully benefit from the words in List B, I recommend adding a few other key words to your vocabulary. Words like this and it, which will allow you to then point to anything and everything and say "this." Forget learning 1,000 nouns. Focus your early efforts on a few key verb conjugations (I am, she is, etc) and then add fancy nouns, adjectives, and prepositions, as you learn them. This will result in more functional basic communication.

In addition, every time you add a new vocabulary word to your repertoire, you will be able to do so much more with it! If you know the words in List B and then you learn the word "car," you can now say want car, need car, have car, etc. By focusing your early efforts on learning key functional language, you will optimize your opportunities for communication. You will be surprised at how quickly you can begin to understand and speak back in your new language!

2. Don't forget to use what you already know.

Believe it or not, you know a lot about every single language spoken in the world! Languages have been shown to develop similarly across cultures and continents. This means that hundreds of years ago, when international travel was much less common, the rules of language still developed in Asia as they did in Africa.

All languages have defining features, such as intonation, which can help clarify communication. For example, when I first arrived in France, I literally couldn't understand more than a few spoken words. However, the voice inflection at the end of sentences let me know when someone was making a statement or asking me a question, in which case I was expected to respond. I remember initially spacing out when someone would talk to me because I understood so little, but as soon as I heard the inflection change, I would piece together a basic response. This one simple cue allowed me to participate (however minimally) in conversation which, as you will read later, is extremely important.

3. Don't underestimate your English vocabulary.

This will generally be more helpful when learning Romance (Latin-based) and Germanic languages, but there may be similarities you can find in other languages too, especially since many languages use the English words for certain technology, such as cell phones.

For those who are less familiar with language origins, I have included a list of some of the Romance and Germanic languages, along with some English similarities.

Romance Languages: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, Occitan

Germanic Languages: German, Yiddish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Afrikaans

English Words Found in Other Languages (Cognates)
French	Spanish	German
restaurant	acento (accent)	all
sandwich	familia (family)	fair
garage	salario (salary)	Alkohol (alcohol)
photo	telefono (telephone)	Maschine (machine)
intelligent	radiante (radiant)	Parade (parade)
excellent	danza (dance)	Ring (ring)

As you can see, there are many words you already know or could easily figure out in your new language. These words are called cognates. More French cognates can be found here. Click here for more Spanish cognates. More German cognates can be found here.

4. Don't waste opportunities to communicate.

This is extremely important when you're learning a new language. Talk with anyone and everyone you possibly can who speaks the language you are learning. Complete immersion in another culture where the target language is spoken is usually the fastest way to learn a new language. By being completely immersed in French culture as a foreign exchange student, I was able to understand most of what I heard after just four months. After six months of complete immersion, I was able to say mostly everything I wanted.

Of course, complete immersion is not usually the primary option for most new language learners, which is why it is important to take advantages of opportunities to communicate with speakers of the language you are trying to learn. Join a Korean language club, or make international friends online. Human interaction is not always an option, which leads us to another "don't."

5. Don't only use one form of language input.

One of the best things I ever did for my French skills was to buy the CD of a French music group that I liked called Kyo. They were popular at the time and always on the radio. I liked a few of their songs well enough to purchase their album and, although I did not know it at the time, that CD is one of the best purchases I have ever made.

Listening to music reaches us on a level that spoken language does not. For example, most individuals who have a stutter when they speak will not stutter when singing. Some children with delays in language acquisition have been shown to respond to melodic language therapy. Do not underestimate the power of music. It is the universal language.

Here is what French music did for my language skills: I began to sing along with the songs and imitate the singers which further exposed me to the French accent and offered me a valuable opportunity to improve my own accent. After singing the songs for awhile, I really wanted to know what the words meant, so I began to translate. This was a very tedious process, as I had only been in the country for about two months at this point and my language skills were still very limited. However, translating the songs gave me an immediate and reachable goal.

I was no longer tackling the daunting task of learning the entire French language. Instead, I only had a few songs to translate. The songs exposed me to words to which I had not yet been exposed. My curiosity about the meaning of the songs turned into a language lesson that I could enjoy. After translating the songs word by word, I was then able to sing the songs with new meaning and purpose. Some words were hard to say, but it became an exciting challenge each time a song would play to see if I could say all the words correctly this time around. Unknowingly, I had become my own French tutor, and you can do the same and have fun doing it.

6. Don't be afraid to make mistakes.

It will happen. You will not be able to communicate in your new language as you do in your native language for quite some time. You may have to say some things differently because you don't yet know a word. If you are really nervous about making mistakes, try talking with a child. Even though his accent was better than mine, my six-year-old host brother was the only person with whom I could have a stress-free conversation in the beginning.

7. Don't ever think you are done learning.

Do you know every word in the English language? I feel that I know a lot, yet there are still many English words I have never heard before. This will also be true with the new language you learn. Even after two years abroad, I would still occasionally encounter a word I did not know, and I would expect the same to be true for you.

8. Don't forget to dream in your new language.

If you continue working on your language skills, you will reach a point where you will begin to think in the new language when you are speaking. That is, when I am talking in French, I am thinking in French at that time. When I first began learning the language, I had to take time to translate and think about what I was going to say. Just as you think in English when you are talking in English, so you will think in your new language when you are speaking it. Then one night you will dream in your new language, and you will realize it was all worth it.

Since learning French, I have applied these techniques to many other languages, including Russian, Croatian, and German with great success. Once you "unlock" the first new language, it becomes easier to learn more! Good luck with your language endeavors. I hope you find these suggestions helpful. Are there any techniques that have worked for you when learning a new language?