THE LANGUAGE THAT WE SPEAK

Language is an integral part of society because it is very fundamental to cultural identity (Zuckermann and Amery, 2015). Language is a tool of communication and people must use or speak the language to keep it alive (Crystal, 2000). But today’s increasingly globalized world has brought about new phenomenon called ‘linguicide’ or language loss or language death.

Horak (2011) revealed that language death is a common phenomenon in language studies. It is a linguistic evolution in which no speaker uses of the language. A language can die even in a civilized society—i.e. if no more people use it. Language exists through and depends on its speakers. If these speakers are threatened physically, economically, politically, culturally, their language is automatically in danger as well.

Many researchers have disclosed that the tendency of languages in the 21^st century to have been endangered is high. Crystal (2000) pointed out that language shift is generally the gradual shift in the use of language from the mother tongue to the foreign language. This is part of the trend called language endangerment or language death. This might happen because of the presence of this dominant or the killer language.

English, being one of the official languages in the Philippines, will cause threat to local languages knowing that language endangerment has now become more extreme apart from other kinds of loss in biodiversity. Language is the richest part of human diversity, yet many languages are starting to disappear and become extinct (Bradley and Bradley, 2002). English becomes one of the country’s official languages because of this colonial effect to the Philippines which was colonized before by the United States. This paves way to English, aside from Filipino, being the language of instruction in the country (Buda, 2013).

The United Nations estimates that more than half of the languages spoken today have fewer than 10,000 speakers and that a quarter has fewer than 1,000 speakers. Language endangerment is on its peak if this occurrence will not be given with enough attention. The language becomes extinct when its primary user dies. If the younger generation doesn’t continue on using the language, any language will be in the verge of extinction (Lydersen, 2009).

According to Sasse’s (1992) theory, languages undergo the usual linguistic process wherein the old languages were changed and transformed and metamorphosed into modern languages. Henceforth, the author argued that languages never die because each language has borrowed words. So, language never dies.

Horak (2009) supports the idea that ‘language wouldn’t exist without speakers.’ Therefore, language death is literally a linguistic phase wherein all its speakers have disappeared. This has been supported by another linguist Brenzinger (1992) who says that ‘a language is considered to be extinct when there is no longer a speech community using the language.’

However, another linguist Crystal (2000) considers language as a ‘tool of communication.’ Therefore, only one speaker makes communication impossible resulting to language death. But Horak (2009) argued that one last speaker of the language is enough to pass on his linguistic knowledge to another human being. With that being said, there is only restriction as to language function but the language still exists.

Horak (2009) supports the definition of language death as defined by McMahon (1994) who says that language death ‘involves a transfer of allegiance of the first language to the second or dominant language as product of which the indigenous population has become bilingual.’ With these findings, Horak (2009) concluded that language death is a ‘phase of linguistic evolution,’ claiming that a language can die even in a civilized society.

Language is fundamental to culture and identity. When one loses his/her language, he/she loses his/her identity. We must do our part to revitalize the language that we speak.

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