How War Often Leads to Language Extinction
February 15, 2022
If you keep up with news today, you know that one of the harsh realities of our time is the growing number of wars that are ongoing in differing parts of the world. Despite the industrialization of the global village, conflicts between cultures still seem inevitable as groups rely on war to resolve many disagreements over borders, wealth, and natural resources.
But. how did language conflicts shift from individual behaviors to involve large numbers of people?
Since the earliest humans roamed the earth, people have found ways to communicate with each other. After all, life was hard back then and obtaining food and shelter was made easier by working together. From prehistoric hand signals to the time the first sounds were uttered face to face, language experts have suggested that Homo Erectus was most likely the first species to actually rely on a developed language. Whereas the earliest physical engagements likely evolved from wanting someone else’s cave or another hunter’s kill, there is little archaeological evidence that war-like forms of violence were a part of prehistoric life.
Sedentism played a major role in language development.
Archaeologist discovered that once hunter-gathers learned to balance scarce resources, they abandoned the practice of being highly mobile and began living in one place (sedentism) for much longer periods of time. Suddenly, nomadic tribes were populations that enjoyed permanent settlements and relocation was most often a result of climate change or the exhausting of an important local resource. Homo sapiens enhanced social capability and new technologies like tools and spears gave certain groups a competitive advantage as they expanded their territories. Writing, which is sometimes called humankind’s greatest invention, developed and communities had both a spoken and written forms of language to use for communications.
Conflict Often Leads to a Language Shift
Warmongers are known to manipulate and use language as a weapon to rally support for launching an attack, and it is well documented that nasty political battles have often been fought over language rights. However, peacemakers also know the potential for language to defuse a situation and restore peace amongst warring factions. Although the relationship of language and war can be observed from many angles, language issues are often at the center of the struggle for power and control over the planet’s scarcest resources.
Where war is not inseparable from the human condition, it is a product of society and the cultures they generate. Moreover, its origins appear correlated with a population’s economic growth and social development. For certain, war creates situations involving language contact that can both disturb and threaten the language ecology of the regions involved. As a result of war, two languages can see one language replaced by the other. This type of language shift is common when one of the languages has much higher prestige. Unfortunately, such casualties of war can lead to language endangerment and/or language extinction.
Bangladesh is the only nation in the world to have fought a major war based on preserving the right to speak its own language. Known as International Mother Language Day, Bangladeshis celebrate every year on February 21st. If your organization needs to communicate with other cultures, contact ProLingo at 800-287-9755 for accurate and precise translations and interpretations.
