Why Should We Protect Endangered Languages? February 24, 2014
Posted by OromianEconomist in Africa, Ethiopia's Colonizing Structure and the Development Problems of People of Oromia, Afar, Ogaden, Sidama, Southern Ethiopia and the Omo Valley, Ethnic Cleansing, Finfinnee, Janjaweed Style Liyu Police of Ethiopia, Kambata, Kemetic Ancient African Culture, Language and Development, Nubia, Ogaden, Omo, Omo Valley, Oral Historian, Oromia, Oromia Support Group, Oromiyaa, Oromo, Oromo Culture, Oromo First, Oromo Nation, Oromo the Largest Nation of Africa. Human Rights violations and Genocide against the Oromo people in Ethiopia, Oromummaa, Qubee Afaan Oromo, Self determination, Sirna Gadaa, State of Oromia, The Oromo Library, Theory of Development, Toltu Tufa, Uncategorized, Wisdom.Tags: Afaan Oromo, Afaan Oromo Kushitic Kemetic language, African culture, African Studies, Development and Change, Genocide against the Oromo, Human Rights and Liberties, Oromia, Oromo, Oromo culture, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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Will the speakers, after all, have equal access to the empire or economy? Experience suggests that they don’t; so that for at least one generation, and probably more, they continue to suffer adverse discrimination. The discrimination which had been attached to their language is then converted to a slur on their poverty, their lack of education, their religion, or their personal appearance. And whose ‘progress’ is being promoted? When society becomes more linguistically integrated, the greater gainers – perhaps the only gainers – may be the existing elite who now have a bigger game of domination to play. The future may even have been misunderstood, and the plans go nowhere. Maybe the minority community holds some of the answers. Is there only one path to a desirable future? Certainly, an autonomous community with its own language may gain little when it comes to dependence on welfare support.
In fact, political ‘divisions’ – although potentially an embarrassment for a national government – are very likely essential to the future identity of a community. A surviving minority language is a convenient way of marking and defending this, and tying it up with a massive cultural tradition. Its loss leads simply to oblivion. …‘Why Should We Protect Endangered Languages?’, is that, if we don’t, the communities that speak those languages will vanish, (along with features that make their life distinctive), almost as if they had never been. This is a loss of something valued by its speakers, and hence valuable. And in the general case, there is no corresponding automatic gain. In the general case, such a loss is to be avoided, if at all possible. This is because it makes the world a poorer place, certainly; but above all it is to be be avoided for the sake of the speakers, who stand to lose – in the long term – their very identities, their treasured sense of who they are and where they come from.- http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/why-should-we-protect-endangered-languages
OromianEconomist 
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