Name: Hery Shah
TA’s Name: Madeline Discussion day and time: Monday – 11:00-11:50
Endangered Languages in 21st Century
There are thousands of languages spoken by people in the world, but more than half of them are at risk of becoming extinct. Many of the languages are at risk because there are only so many people speaking the language. Many languages are at risk of becoming extinct because they are not common to learn among people. Many people tend to use second language instead of using primary language. People find second language as more important than their native language because they are surround by the people who speaks the second language. After doing …show more content…
Blackfoot is an Algonquian language with 25,000 active speakers. (Stout 21) Most of the Blackfoot lives in Canada and some of them live in the southern part of Alberta and Northern part of Montana. (Stout 21) Blackfoot comes from the world siksika that means “Blackfoot” in English. (Stout 21) Blackfeet Indians used to wear dark colored moccasins. In Canada people calls them Blackfoot and in USA people calls them as Blackfeet. There are 4 branches of Blackfoot 3 branches lives Canada and one of the branches lives in the USA. (Stout 25) Blackfeet are one of the few groups who are politically independent. They have their own government, and their own laws. All four of the branches have different governments and different laws. ((Stout 28) Blackfeet were one of the few tribes who lived in Great Plains they became hunters and gatherer. After they were forced to move to the Great Plains, because of war/fight with other tribes. Many of them settled in Canada where they can hunt buffalo or any other animals because they were hunters and gatherer. They also live in very odd way. In the winter they would divide into small group of 100-200 and in summer they would reunite and live in large tribal group. (Stout 42) As of today there are 25,000 Blackfoot languages speaks. Among all of them 15,000 people lives in Canada and about 10,000 lives in USA. (Stout 21) Unlike other language Blackfoot language doesn’t have alphabet because it …show more content…
In next couple of decade we won’t see more than half of the languages. Many of the languages are at risk because they have low amount of active language, because they live in small villages with majority of old people. For example tobati language from Indonesia, which has 70 speakers. After all of them dies the language will become extinct. The other reason is use of second language. Many languages already have low amount of active speakers, and people who speaks the languages started to use second language. The use of second language caused many languages to go extinct. The third reason is the amount of younger people in the group/tribe. Many of the younger people uses second language as their primary language and most of the time their primary languages are much harder to learn than the secondary language. Many anthropologists have been working on projects to preserve the dying languages. Anthropologist’s sponsors’ schools so the younger generation can lean the primary