Language Isn’t Dying—Your Critical Thinking Skills Have Just ‘Fallen Off’

And God said, “let there be light.” And Gen Z said, “let Him cook!” By Tessa Norenius

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Change is often regarded as the death of a primary notion and the birth of a newer one. But must change always result in an end? As cultures grow, people fear the change new technology and contemporary art bring. As an integral aspect of culture, language’s evolution is thought by some to be proportionate with the supposed deterioration of culture. However, this argument is flawed on one small front: language isn’t dying, and it never will.

Language changes and language evolves, but language as a whole cannot die. Not to be confused with extinct languages, a language has died once there are no native speakers. Although dead languages have no native speakers able to fully grasp their nuances, researchers and scholars have dedicated centuries to decoding and preserving them. Where civilizations may be long dead, language perseveres.

Latin, Ancient Greek, Old Norse, and Sanskrit are all dead language— and invaluable relics of ancient civilizations, surviving beyond material artifacts. Though Classical Latin has died, Colloquial Latin evolved to be a base for romance languages. English, a language of the New World, isn’t a romance language but its vocabulary and structure trace back to Latin. In India, thousands of people have studied and can speak Sanskrit. And while there are no longer any native speakers of Old Norse, it is the foundation for modern Icelandic. We may not be speakers of bygone languages, but carrying their roots renders us vessels of the past.

Humans preserve language in written text, performance, and spoken word. Oral histories are a prime example of language’s longevity, passed down for generations. In North America’s Indigenous communities, language is immortalized by spoken word. Expression fluctuates as communication adapts. Often viewed as a symptom of language dying, the rise of slang instills fear in linguists. As traditionally “intellectual” media is traded out for wildly accessible media, some fear cultured communication will perish. Apparently, the evolution of human expression signifies social deterioration; but language has always been dynamic. In 1912, when the slang term “bro” surfaced in place of “brother”, some must have believed it the end of coherent communication but, as notable works of literary canon were produced throughout the 10th century, clearly, it was not. Our perception of reality impacts our perception of language. Does Shakespeare mean nothing without LitCharts, or are we a couple of hundred years too late to be fully immersed in his references? Is what makes Chinese hard to learn for English speakers the vocabulary, or reliance on tone and context? The way we perceive language is constantly changing, relative to our experiences but language always plays a role in our lives. Perhaps after English dies, its seeds will grow the language of the new New World. Future humans may mourn their beloved language, leaning over their elementary English verb conjugation notes, wondering what happened to their thriving tongue. Until then, language worldwide will fluctuate and develop. It will travel over millions of kilometres and years to stay relevant. It will be kindled and kept alive as long as we evolve. And because humans will always find ways to communicate, language will endure. Read more at: Linguistic Relativities, J. Leavitt

Oral Language- National Geographic