Научно - исследовательская работа по теме Languages are in danger

Научно-исследовательская работа на тему: “languages are in danger!” Выполнила: ученица 8 «Б» класса Рашидова Лейла Научный руководитель: Кулакова Анна Сергеевна МАОУ СОШ № 118 Московского района г. Н.Новгорода  Научное общество учащихся

Induction, description of work In the course of acquaintance to information necessary for me I have encountered a set of questions: Indicators of language endangerment. How languages become endangered. Why does it matter? How do speakers respond to language endangerment? How do majority language speakers feel about language endangerment? Proceeding from this interest, I have decided to investigate this subject and to analyze the information about the quantity of languages, having compared two years – 2009 and 2014.

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Object of research is a language. Research objective: to study how languages become extinct. Research hypothesis: there is a tendency of decreasing of world languages in number.

According to the purpose, a subject and hypotheses of research the following tasks are set: 1. To study indicators of language endangerment. 2. To study reasons for language endangerment. 3. To study people’s attitude to language endangerment. In this work I have used the following methods: 1) Theoretical methods 2) Empirical methods (comparing), 3) Method of mathematical 4) Method of graphical representation of data (table, chart).

1.INDICATORS OF LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT Three main criteria are used as guidelines for considering a language ‘endangered’:  The number of speakers currently living.  The mean age of native and/or fluent speakers.  The percentage of the youngest generation acquiring fluency with the language in question.

WHICH LANGUAGES ARE ENDANGERED? LEVELS OF ENDANGERMENT UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger categorises 2,500 languages in five levels of endangerment: vulnerable, definitely endangered, severely endangered, critically endangered and extinct.

HOW LANGUAGES BECOME ENDANGERED Factors include: Intermarriage Market forces Migration Assimilation National Education Policies Modernization

Attitudes Parents today encourage their children to learn languages of wider communication instead of their heritage languages due to the globalization of the world. One major factor that affects the survival of minority languages is the attitudes of the majority language speakers with whom the minority language speakers co-habit on a certain territory. One of these groups is the dominant language group (for example, English in Canada)

Language endangerment is not always language death We should not see language endangerment in simplistic terms. Because there are so many factors involved, a language does not usually die out uniformly. It might be vanishing in one place but not in others, for a variety of different reasons. Population size, though important, is not always critical: a smaller group can dominate a larger one – as has been seen often with the European presence in Africa. Moreover, geographical proximity is not always critical for one culture to influence another.

WHY DOES IT MATTER? HOW DO SPEAKERS RESPOND TO LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT? First is the depletion of linguistic turns and disappearance of cultures. After all, neither English nor French can not boast of such opportunities, which are, for example, in the Eskimo language, which has more than twenty words just to describe snow. And none of the modern giant languages ​​is not able to take on all the global diversity of the songs, poetry and literature, existing in own of small endangered people. Second is with the disappearance of language leaves a huge number of exclusive knowledge about nature and the environment. Just imagine that the discovery of a drug against HIV first type we must thank the Samoan language and its carriers, who know about the healing properties of plants Homalanthus Nutans. At third, Science of the environment is based on the experience of ancestors who own rare languages. For example, the whole world homeopathy exists only thanks to the natural knowledge of small nations and languages ​​of their possession.

How do majority language speakers feel about language endangerment? David Crystal, in a newspaper article published in 1999, presents a not uncommon view about language endangerment and death: ‘Is language death such a disaster?

Practical part Based on the received theoretical data and numerous information on language endangerment, we decided to compare the amount of people, who speak eight of the most speaking languages in the world: Arabic, Chinese, English, Hindi, Russian, French, German, Bengali. Here are the results of our research:

cONCLUSION Having interpreted empirical data, we came to the following conclusions: - all of the languages which were chosen by us have decreased in number since 2009, - these languages are losing relevance among people, - each analyzed language has its own speed of decreasing.

UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger

Thanks for your attention.