«ОҚУШЫЛАР
»
сериясы
«XVIII СӘТБАЕВ ОҚУЛАРЫ»
154
155
from extinction. In order to save human heritage because language is
the only way to save history, poem, stories. For example, as was the
Odyssey «How many other traditions are out there in the world that
we will never know about because no-one recorded them before the
language disappeared» [9]. Moreover, languages contain «knowledge»
about geography, mathematics, zoology. As co-founder of the non-profit
Living Tongues Institute for Endangered languages, Harrison said: «We
lose ancient knowledge if we lose languages» [10]. So, it is something to
care about and try to prevent it. However, how can we do it if there are
too many factors, which affect extinction of languages. Although there
are many forces which kill languages, there are many forces, which will
save languages, too.
Firstly, we need to increase the prestige of language by promoting it in
media, technology and printing editions. Though Krauss said that television
and radio are useful tools in enhancing indigenous languages. If programs
are broadcasted in the indigenous language, people will be able to hear their
language every day and develop their skills. For instance, one non-profit
organization named Cultural Survival, Inc.7 has the project, which supports
community radio and broadcasts in the indigenous language [11]. And it
greatly helps to save the language it is everywhere.
Secondly, languages should gain official status from the government
because it will lead to more resources in this language and knowledge
of the language will become more valuable to the public. Therefore, all
languages that exist in one country they should be all equally valuable,
for instance, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev envisages
future Kazakhstan as the trilingual country. He states that we should
know Kazakh as a national language, Russian as an official language
used by Kazakh in local agencies and English as an international language
[12]. Therefore, trilingual education has been piloted in 33 schools for
gifted children in 2007. Then, when this type of education showed its
success, it was implemented into 17 Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools
and in 2020; the number of trilingual schools is going to reach 700 [13].
However, these changes sometimes do not help because people assume
these innovations wrongly, for example, they think that the key point
of this program is to learn English and speak only in this language, so
they forget their native Kazakh language, which in turn, can cause many
problems in the future. Now we have a plenty of endangered languages
just, because of the wrong perception of people.
Increase the awareness of people is equally important as the
implementation of the program, so we need to change our President’s
policy a little bit. Firstly, there is need to promote awareness of the role
of the trilingual policy not only for students but also for all citizens
in Kazakhstan. Secondly, there is need to increase clarity to how this
education is perceived by teachers because they are the people who
teach our future generation. For instance, the junior researcher from
Nazarbayev University Assel Kambatyrova argues that educators find
trilingual education challenging ad this can make us think that views and
practices differ substantially [15]. So, to promote international language
and preserve our national language all the aspects should be covered.
Our identity develops from the childhood with the help of our
family, so a family can contribute to children’s process of learning the
indigenous language. Parents should teach their children their national
language in order to prevent the extinction of it. Usually, children know
well language on which they talked at home, so the better parents will try
to teach their children the more speakers of certain language we will have.
So, language is everything and only one spoken language means
nothing. However, despite this, there are a lot of dying languages, which
should be preserved, so that we could prevent its death and other cruel
consequences. Also, there are too many reasons for the extinction of
languages, which cause the death of culture, history, and identity of the
nation. So, I firmly believe that this situation will change with the help
of people’s awareness about this problem. Otherwise, we will be close
to living in the world where people do not communicate.
This research explores the issue of extinction of languages because
there are too many
Endangered languages. Purposes are to find out why this issue
appears in order to save endangered languages and to identify what will
be after extinction and how can we prevent it. Therefore, in this research
the main questions are:
1 What do cause the extinction of languages?
2 Is it important to save endangered languages?
3 How can we prevent extinction of languages?
I decided to write about it for our future generation in order to
prevent further extinction of languages. Also, my research will be
interesting for every nation, which language is dying, has already died
or in danger of extinction. In addition, because I live in Kazakhstan for
me it is important at all. My research in this area will motivate people
and increase their awareness about that problem.
There were two main types of research that I used in the study.
First, one is secondary research, which was used in order to expand
|