Why Learn a Foreign Language and Kill your own?

In our rapidly globalizing world of today, minority languages are disappearing at a faster rate than ever. This is mostly due to the fact that the bigger, more “useful” languages are starting to become the choice of the younger populations; and once the children stop speaking a language, it is on a straight route to extinction. But, what makes these more widespread languages more “useful” than the minority languages? Well, there are many reasons, including the economic situation of an individual or community, migrations, pop-culture, etc. However, for this case let’s focus specifically on one major one: Education.

A better education is perhaps the key to a better lifestyle in pretty much any case. Having a good education can impact individuals in the fact that it will be easier for them to find jobs, especially if they studied at big, prestigious universities (which, by the way, mostly speak the bigger languages). Having a better education can also allow individuals that come from a small community to support that community more easily, whether it’s just by sending money back home or actually going back to help people out. A better education can indeed help both individuals and communities grow stronger, however there is one big issue that remains and perhaps it can’t even be solved. This is the fact that in order to get a higher education, one must learn the language that education will be in, thus people are forced to learn bigger languages.

Take a look at the top 10 universities from here onto perhaps more than 50 years into the future and I can assure you that at least 8 of them will be English-speaking universities. The top 5 universities nowadays are all in either the UK or the USA and majority of the top 100 universities in the world are also English-speaking universities. And if they aren’t English-Speaking, then they speak another major language, like French or German. This not only implies that people seeking to get a better education will have to learn the languages spoken in these universities, but also that all the academic research will be in those languages, meaning that even in order to simply access information one needs to learn these languages. When people learn other languages like this they often lose proficiency in their own language, since they are no longer using it for the more complicated aspects of their life (their studies) and also since the majority of the social interactions in that place will be in that foreign language. When people lose proficiency in their native language, they might also lose some interest of going back home and relearning it. This is also due to the fact that they can probably find a better-paying job wherever they are studying than back in their home town or country. This also increases the likelihood of the person getting married and settling in one of those countries for good, meaning that their children will grow up learning the language of that place instead of their native language and thus the language will eventually go extinct…

It’s pretty sad, isn’t it?