Causes of Destruction of Script and Language

4. Causes of Destruction of Script and Language
There are two senses of the destruction of script and language. They are:

a. To identify symptoms of destruction
b. To examine the first cause in one’s language

a. To Identify Symptoms of Destruction,
There seem to be three symptoms in this category. They are:
I. Methods to examine destruction
II. Age category
III. Comprehensibility and practicality

I. Methods to Examine Destruction
There are methods to see signals of the destruction of a language. Population is one of them. It is believed that if less than 10,000 people are speaking one language, the language is supposed to have been on the way to destruction. The language of the people with less population is signalized to be destructing if more than 40% of that community speaks other languages.

II.   Age Category
The age of the people speaking and not speaking a language is taken as another way of examining the destruction of a language. For instance, people aged 40, if unable or humiliated to speak their language, are taken as a symptom of destruction. When only older people speak a mother tongue and not the younger generation, it is a significant cause of that language’s destruction.

III.     Comprehensibility and Practicality
Comprehensibility of a language and its use in communication is another symptom of a language’s destruction. If people can understand their mother tongue but can’t speak it, it is also taken as a symptom of the destruction of a language.

These three conditions should be taken as significant causes of the destruction of language. Not getting a job in a department of government offices, to blame one’s language, culture, and religion is also the cause of the destruction of a language.

A Bird’s Eye View in Our Own Language from the Aforementioned Perspective

The aforementioned causes seem to be speeding up in foreign countries and their provinces, and some situations are occurring in our villages, too. For instance, if asked in their mother tongue, children of Sherpa reply in a medium language, which is an indication of understanding the deteriorating condition of our mother tongue. If this continues, our mother tongue will be destroyed in our villages.

5. Final Consequence of Destruction of Language and Script
The people are supposed to die, and the caste is considered to have been eliminated from the root if language and script are destroyed. For instance, if a person from one caste forgets one’s language and culture and assimilates others’ language and culture, this person has already become of another caste. Furthermore, this person has already adopted the habits, food and clothing of others as well. As such, a person has to follow the language, culture, tradition, and speaking patterns of other castes; identity, symbols, signs, and emblems of the previous caste don’t occur in the transformed caste. So religion, language, script, culture, and tradition are the proof of different caste and identity.

So, this is taken as the main reason. Linguists opine that the mother tongue is the main proof of a caste to claim its rights. Once it is lost, the caste and humans also get lost. The history also gets destroyed, and there won’t be any proof of that person’s identity and caste.

Linguists take language as an invaluable arsenal of the history of humans, and the mother tongue is an identity indicator of a caste and pillar of memory. Once the identity indicator of a caste gets destroyed, the end of the people of that community also arrives soon. It is also heard to be saying a person without a mother tongue is like a human without ‘atman’ (the soul). So, Scholars and linguists have great concern about the receding trend of the mother tongue to extinction. Australian author Kabit Malaufan’s view becomes worth mentioning here. He notices that the language he is speaking is slowly going away from the lips and tongue of the local speakers. Pondering on this topic creates great fear in him, says writer Kabid. He has shared his feelings as graver than one’s own death. A person without a mother tongue and culture is like an orphan.

Similarly, another scholar shared his feelings regarding the loss of language and culture. To talk about the history of the ‘Khoikhoi’ community of the ‘Menta’ caste of Africa, Hendrikastromen has said that being unable to speak one’s mother tongue creates a feeling of growing up sucking an unknown woman’s breast.

When we talk about the Sherpa community, if language, culture, script and tradition get destroyed, the Sherpa community will also die. There won’t be another worse scenario than this. It would be the worst scenario not only for Sherpa but also for the global community. It is because the culture of Sherpa has benefitted lots of people across the globe.

Further loss of a language and a script hampers the particular caste, state and whole human community equally. This point has further been supported by experts meeting in the United Nations. In the meeting of the United Nations Language Federation in Canada in 1992, linguists and scholars unanimously concluded that the loss of a mother tongue is an unrecoverable loss to the whole human.

6. In this grave situation, it comes to be our great concern to protect and preserve our culture and language. There are two ways we can do to protect and preserve our language. They are:

a. When to Protect Language?
b. How to protect language?