VANISHING VOICES: A POTENT THREAT TO GLOBAL LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AND CULTURAL HERITAGE

Language death and cultural disappearance are two sides of the same coin which are faced with the same irresistible forces of human migration and homogenisation of world civilisation. Language is endangered when its speakers cease to speak it or use it in selected domains. The paper identifies: attitudes, cataclysms, conflicts, education etc as responsible for this ugly linguistic scenario and establishes pedestals: roles of family (speaking), government (advocacy), linguists (documentation) as well as NGOs (sensitization). Language does not die alone rather it dies along with its core values: unique sounds, names of animal and plant in the said speech community, unique forms of expression, traditional medicines and herbs, cultural heritage etc are swept away without trace! The paper concludes that many factors are responsible for language death and these could be internal and external. However, putative measures are suggested to halt this ugly linguistic trend.