Languages

Language is such an incredible communication tool. By uttering various sounds we humans are able to connect with others, share thoughts, express feelings, give commands, impart information and on and on. Then, by uttering other sounds, we are able to respond to the sounds just made to us. These sounds, of course, represent language. Presently, it is estimated there are over 7,000 languages in the world today. As geologist Jared Diamond recently wrote, many of these languages are unknown to most of us, some are only spoken and unwritten and can be heard in far away lands to which few ever travel. Mandarin is the primary language in the world followed by Spanish, English and Arabic.

Even though it may not be the most popular of scholarly fields, lingistics strikes me as one of the most fascinating. Those who study it are almost detective-like in their pursuit of examining the origins and evolution of this most basic way of communicating. Their field of expertise is an important key to the existence of mankind and, in many ways, insight into how we will be interacting in the years to come. As many of the languages of the world are spoken by a relatively few people, those so-called sounds will in all likelihood cease to exist when those people pass away. The result, eventually, is that how we as a species communicate  will be via many of the more popular or giant languages of today.   

I do not find this to be particularly good or comforting news. While it is true the only language I speak or write is one of the major ones, the prospect that the billions of us who live on this planet will be reduced to communicating via a few lanauges might make things easier, in a larger context it also speaks to a decline in what helps make us unique, colorful and individual. Perhaps this trend is inevitable. After all, in the animal kingdom, for instance, the number of creatures in the world today is also less than what it used to be. I do not like that either. And so it goes with language. I only hope it is a slow decline.