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Topic 3: Too many resources that could be used otherwise are being allocated to encourage the
study and documentation of endangered languages so that relatively small language
communities can maintain their languages as a living means of communications, or document
them for future generations.
Sub-issue 1: Financial issues involved with maintenance and documentation
Pros:
- Provides jobs to researchers.
- Money spent on the humanities
- Unlike central language projects, the technology and resources for noncentral languageprojects are freely available
- Databases, platforms and resources for noncentral language projects are easily accessible and shared
Cons:
- Resources are resources and the country is in debt
- Finances, especially in developing countries, are better spent on medical care
- Preservation of language benefits minorities first
- Financial resources needed on different levels: for researchers to find certain minority groups and to find valuable documents of the endangered language, and translators to translate the minority language
- Research for endangered languages is not continuous; oftentimes researchers who finish one project will leave the center, which weakens the maintenance of data
- It is difficult to find researchers who are both native speakers and who have computational or linguistic training
- Researchers are often trained in central languages and prefer to stay in that realm
- Government or whoever is funding the research might take away financial resources because they feel it is not important to invest on documenting endangered languages
Sub-issue 2: Identity for linguistic minorities
Pros:
- Linguistic group will maintain their language, which they can associate
community with
- A culture is preserved
- Each culture means something to the entire world community; if a language fades, a group loses a part of its culture, and the rest of the world loses something as well. ”We lose one more window into the human mind,” said Dr. Ladefoged, professor emeritus of phonetics at UCLA
- More clear distinction between ethnic groups and cultures
- The government has a right to uphold the right of linguistic minorities
Con:
- Loss of unity and nationalism
- Ethnic grouping breaks down the nation into minorities
- Another language to learn in addition to multiple lingua franca‘s
- People have the right to let go of a language; linguistic minorities may want to join the mainstream and not be isolated because of their native languages
Sub-issue 3: Linguistic diversity
Pros:
- Linguists can continue to study the range of languages and sounds; they want to learn all they can while they can
- Stimulates public to re-think about the importance of conserving endangered languages
Cons:
- Languages become endangered for a reason; according to Romaine, endangered languages become such because they lack informal intergenerational transmission and informal daily life support
- Relatively small language communities can adopt a major language that others are speaking
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