Language death
Language death occurs in unstable bilingual or multilingual speech communities as a result of language shift from a regressive minority language to a dominant majority language."
(Wolfgang Dressler, "Language Death." 1988) "A language is said to be dead when no one speaks it any more. It may continue to have existence in recorded form, of course--traditionally in writing, more recently as part of a sound or video archive (and it does in a sense 'live on' in this way)--but unless it has fluent speakers one would not talk of it as a 'living language.' . . ."The effects of a dominant language vary markedly in different parts of the world, as do attitudes towards it. In Australia, the presence of English has, directly or indirectly, caused great linguistic devastation, with 90% of languages moribund. But English is not the language which is dominant throughout Latin America: if languages are dying there, it is not through any 'fault' of English. Moreover, the presence of a dominant language does not automatically result in a 90% extinction rate. Russian has long been dominant in the countries of the former USSR, but there the total destruction of local languages has been estimated to be only (sic) 50%."
(David Crystal, Language Death. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002)
Here in Kuwait we find that the youngest generations don't understand most of the old Kuwaiti idioms and words not just because it's not used anymore (because there still old people trying to pass them to the new generations but it is still not affective enough for remaining the language as it is), but because the new generation is replacing these idioms with other idioms mostly from the English language because of many reasons that includes the new wave of enrolling the children in English schools, and that is why we find our language is containing more word from English.
I will write some of the old Kuwaiti's words in Arabic and it's meaning and you can write more examples:
الجندل (الشندل) = خشب يستخدم لسقف الغرفة
خـّري مـّري = الدخول والخروج من غير إستئذان أو نظام
سِـنيار = مرافقة بعض بالمراكب ، وعادة تستخدم بالسفر أو الطريق الطويل بحري كان أو بري
عقر بقر = تقال هذه الكلمه للانسان المريض واللذي يريدون ممازحته مثال اشفيك طاقك عقر بقر يعني اشفيك حاشك مرض البقرة اللى انكسرت ريلها او امرضت وما قامت تقدر تقوم
كيري ميري = وهو لفظ يقوله القدماء يعنون به اللف والدوران فيقول البعض مثال انا ما عندي كيري ميري
بربس = صفة تطلق على الكلام عديم الفائدة وعلى العمل الذي لا فائدة ترجي من ورائه وعلى الشخص الذي لا اعتماد عليه مثال شغلكم بربس
Hello Eyman, first of all thank you a lot for the useful subject. Truly, the language death is a dangerous thing that affects the culture of any community. Of course there are many reasons that result language death one of them is the development of the society and also technology. In many ways technology as media (radio, internet, T.V) have a strong affect in our generation, where we learn a new words from it. In this generation we see the affect of English language on them and they use one English word in each sentence. In one hand, there are some words that actually didn't exist in the past, such as the word (computer) doesn't exist before. In other hand, we feel worry about losing our language because the language is the culture of any society which reflect their identity.
ReplyDeleteHi Eman, Itotally agree with you.And as Farah noted above there are lots of reasons for language death . I would like other old kuwaiti words that we donot use anymore:
ReplyDeleteالششمة=النظارة
طحيحة=متوفر بكثرة
طنجلة= الشخص السمين
شماطيط= الملابس المقطعة
تناتيش=الشىء الثقيل
يزوغل=يغش في اللعب
متكيهن= فلان يتصنع في حركاته
متليش= متعب جدا ومرهق
امعطعط=الشخص ذو البنية الضعيفة نتيجة مرض او شيخوخه
اعصابه= قطعة من القماش تلف حول رأ س من به وجع في رأسه
Thank you so much for raising this topic and Ihope that we all try to use these words more often.
First of all, I think that language death happens when the native speakers don't have any loyalty, pride or even love for their mother tongue language. And thats why its easy for them to replace their language with another language.
ReplyDeleteI don't actually think that by not using the old Kuwaiti terms the language would be dead. Even though we don't use the terms you mentioned above, we still speak the Kuwaiti dialect and we speak it proudly. The language is not dead, it has been a little bit altered and adjusted to be suitable for our time.
Abeer I think it would be nice if you tried to use these words, but I don't think that by using them you will enrich the Kuwaiti dialect. Maybe you can use them with your grandparents or even your parents to make them happy, but it wont be helpful while communicating with people from our generation.
Intersting topic Eman, good job ;)
Hi all, what a great topic that you have discussed :)
ReplyDeleteBut first of all we should know what dose language death means.
In linguistics, language death is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language variety is decreased,
eventually resulting in no native and/or fluent speakers of the variety. Language death may affect any language idiom, including dialects and languages.
Language death should not be confused with language attrition (also called language loss) which describes the loss of proficiency in a language at the individual level.
Most of communities are suffering from language death, as you said Kuwaiti language is a good example that shows us this death.
But we should have solutions to this big problem before we lose our identity.
Good choice Eman ;D
Thank you Farah for your comment, and I agree with you that technology and media have a main affect on the young generations because they are dealing with the whole world now not just their society; the technology opened the doors for them to communicate with the whole world, this is the Globalization and sure it will affect the societies identity.
ReplyDeleteI am glad Abeer that you liked my topic. To be honest with you I think it is hard to use these words nowadays because the changes that accord to our dialect because of the development of our lifestyle and finding new words that have better description and more functional of things around us.
ReplyDeleteFatma you always surprise me with your comments, and I mean it in a good way ;). First of all thank you for your comment that I agree with in the point that our dialect has been adjusted to be suitable for our time, but I also disagree with the point of "language death happens when the native speakers don't have any loyalty, pride or even love for their mother tongue language", because I think loyalty, pride, and love have anything to do with this because people didn't meant it to happened, it mostly happen unconsciously.
ReplyDeleteThank you Samar for posting your comment, it is very important to us as Kuwaiti's to be aware at least about the changes that accord in our dialect, and thank God that we have people like the researcher Ganima AL-Fahad that talk about this subject in media all the time.
ReplyDeleteI liked what eman wrote about language death . she is absolutely right, and I agree with her.
ReplyDeleteDevelopment of technology and globalization have a big impact on the language. I think that globalization is the cause of confusion between Arab culture and Western culture . therefore, we can see the western habits and language entered strongly in our culture
I'm glad Johara that you like it, and it is right the media now have a main role in spreading the western cultures by putting them under the spotlight and neglecting our own culture.
ReplyDeleteI don't know Eman, it's hard to tell the difference between people who forget about their mother tongue conciously and those who forget about it unconciously.. You do have a point that language death happens unconciously, but that's not always the case..
ReplyDeletesome times when you adapt the language and norms of the new culture, you can still preserve your own language and culture.
I have an Indian friend, she was born and raised in the US, she's never been to India, but she speaks Hindi along with English and she values the traditions of the Indian culture... I think it depends on the way you are brought up
Glad I could surprise sweety ;)
Hello everyone
ReplyDeleteThat’s totally right .The death of language is the death of culture. whenever we stop using our own language then gradually our culture would disappear and for the English language, we are forced to use it in our daily life, because there are many products that we use is in English and must of researches are in English. I agree with Fatma when she said that "language is not dead it has been a little bit altered"
Thank you Eman and nice job :)
Reem Lafi