On The Brink of Death

We all love watching ferrets dancing to the latest hit on Tiktok or keeping up with the Kardashians on Instagram, but could our social media tendencies be causing a mass extinction? According to Unesco, there are about 6,500 languages spoken around the world. However, one of these languages dies approximately every two weeks. At this rate, linguists predict 90% of all languages will be extinct by the end of the century.

Regardless of your age, social media has become an integral part of your life. More and more people are now choosing the ease of a text, Instagram, or Snap over the traditional spoken communications. Social media’s overwhelming reliance on English-speaking content means people have to choose between keeping their ancestral language (leaving their community marginalized) or assimilating into the mainstream culture at the expense of their language. For example, Bhagnari, the endangered Indian language of my grandparents, is down to its last speakers. Parents have prioritized teaching their children Hindi and English to be more successful. Without speaking the language daily, the loss of Bhagnari and other languages is inevitable.

A Unesco study found that 98% of internet platforms are published in only 12 languages, with over half in English. In fact, without knowing one of the seven most common languages (Mandarin, English, Hindi, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, or Malay), your future is limited to a fast-shrinking community of native speakers. But why should we care? After all, if the world only spoke a handful of languages, we would be more unified. But is this worth the destruction of thousands of languages?

Languages are time capsules carrying living relics of distant pasts and protecting unique cultures and ways of life. For myself, not learning my grandparent’s language has caused me to be distant from my culture and ancestral past. When a language dies, it results in a truly tragic loss. We lose far more than unique sound patterns and black marks on a page. Indeed, we lose millennia of knowledge, stories, and values. When a language spoken in the Amazon dies, information about the rainforest and plants unknown to the rest of the world is lost forever. Imagine a world where there were only a handful of cultures. The world would lack the diversity and excitement that make it such an interesting place. This would hardly be worth a more linguistically unified world.

If we want to keep living in a diverse world, we need to increase social media's linguistic diversity. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram need to support more languages.

I’m not saying to stop binge-watching Bridgerton or rewatching Baby Shark twenty times on Youtube, but maybe spend ten minutes of your day learning Navajo or Welsh on Duolingo.

Sources:

Wilford, John Noble. "World's Languages Dying off Rapidly." New York Times,September 18, 2007.

Strochlic, Nina. "The Race to Saving the World's Disappearing Languages."National Geographic, April 16, 2018.

Dewey, Caitlin. "How the Internet Is Killing the World's Language." TheWashington Post, December 4, 2013.

Wallace, Lance. "What's Lost When a Language Dies." The Atlantic, November 10, 2009.

Trevino, Miguel Trancozo. "The Many Languages Missing from the Internet."BBC, April 14, 2020.

Image from: https://www.cnnphilippines.com/business/2019/10/5/duolingo-endangered-languages-going-extinct.html