Protecting the world's languages.

• Author: Capelle, Alfred
• Position: Ensuring Children Complete Primary Schooling

Many of the world's languages today are dying and many are considered endangered. They die when their oldest living speakers pass away.

Where are the children and grandchildren of these speakers? Generally, they are alive and well, but are speaking some other language they learned in schools where their parents sent them, because they thought it would open doors to getting good jobs and making a better living. In the rush to adopt this language of perceived opportunity, they neglected the language of their home community, never learned to read or write it and eventually found they could not even remember how to speak it. They also neglected learning how to fish and hunt, grow crops, sing and dance, or talk about things in the old way. In joining the modern world, they had left the old world behind, unable to return even if they had wanted to.

What we see here is the downside of westernization and modernization. But is it inevitable? I think not. There are ways to soften its effect and make our children capable of living happily in both worlds. I will mention here three that are closely interrelated. The first is bilingual education, which helps students learn to read and write the language they have heard from birth--the language of their home community--while also learning the world language that offers wider opportunities. The insight thereby gained in the relation between letters and sounds of the language they know well is then easily transferred to the reading and writing of the world language learnt in school. They are enabled to become ambidextrous in languages as it were--one might say, "ambi-lingual".

There is another element to bilingual education that goes beyond the teaching of reading and writing in two languages. Students need to learn to use the home language in dealing with western things and concepts. Equally important, they need to learn to talk in world language about all the activities of daily living in their home communities, and the old ways of getting a living from the land and the sea. They should also learn to use either language in any situation, so that they can feel equally at home in their home communities and in the world community, and be in a position to have something to offer to both.

It sounds easy enough, but why isn't it done more often? There is a negative attitude that stands in the way, one that is commonly held about bilingual education and multilingualism generally. The idea--the fallacy--is that...