Half of the world’s languages under threat

Title: Half of the world’s languages under threat

Author: Paul Holmes
Publication Info: Published by Reuters-Paris
Date: 26 May 2011
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In Class

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/

                This article addresses the disappearance of languages in our society. The article supports the claim made by Professor Stephen Wurm that the decline of languages is directly related to the diminution of their speakers. This theory is supported by him making a reference to the disappearance of aboriginal languages in Australia due to the fall in numbers of the native Australian population. This is comparable to that of the United States. Today, the language spoken in America is accepted as being English rather than the native languages of the Navajos, Cherokees, and Iroquois etc. This suggestion makes sense because if all the Koreans were to disappear, the language becomes of no use and thus forgotten among the people. Although I am in favor of this argument, there seems to be many knowledge issues that can be addressed regarding this topic.

            [Knowledge Issues] How accurate is this study? Could it be that the speakers are all dispersed in other countries and thus are multilingual? [Observation] The article does not state the procedure used to carry out this study and so this initiates a sense of doubt to the readers. The procedure is very significant because it allows us to evaluate the accuracy of the study. For example, if this was carried out in an internet-based survey, there is a high possibility that people may choose to take it as a joke and state false information. Also, internet-based surveys usually only allows us to click on one option; thus what happens to the multi-language speakers? Another example could be visiting random people and asking them face-to-face. The problem of lying also applies to this. For example, if a random person asked me what languages I speak, I may not want to give him the correct information seeing as I do not know who he is and what he is capable of doing, and thus I may give him false information, which he would then take to be valid information. Also, a problem caused by this method is that there are so many people in the world that we cannot possibly ask each and every person. [Knowledge Issues] How would we know who to ask? How would we know that a certain person(s) is capable of representing the majority? Because the method is not described in the article, the article’s claim is vulnerable to doubt and disbelief.