IMPORTANCE OF

LANGUAGES
1. Importance of Languages for Personal
Communication
Language is not only a mode of communication
between individuals but is also a way for the expression
of their personality.

We use language to:

● inform the people around us of what we feel

● what we desire
● question/understand the world around us
We communicate effectively with our words, gestures,
and tone of voice in a multitude of situation.

Would you talk to a small child with the same words

you would in a business meeting? Being able to
communicate with each other, form bonds, teamwork,
and it’s what separates humans from other animal
species. Communication drives our lives and better
ourselves.

Even with the ability to communicate with each other.

Misunderstandings happen. Remember, communication
is a two-way street that should be embraced and not
ignored.
2. Importance of Languages for Personal
Development

Believe it or not, some people can be arrogant to

believe they can’t go to foreign countries without
knowing anything about the language or culture of the
people in the places they visit.
The importance of language is beneficial regardless if
you do it for fun or for your career or even just for
personal travel. They expect the indigenous people to
accommodate them and know their language.

The importance of language isn’t much different no

matter what your nationality is. Honestly, if you were
to study other languages you will find that most of
them are actually pretty similar. Mainly the differences
are in alphabet, pronunciation, and grammar with the
syntax generally staying the same.

We should use it to show our understanding of the

cultures and lives of our fellow men in other lands. We
should go behind the outer shell and see the speaker
beneath.

3. Importance of Languages for Career

Development
The importance of languages really shines in your
career and business than
relationship with ifcompanies
you were trying to reach
to conduct all
global audiences and markets. More and more business
leaders recognize to compete you have to have
knowledge of many foreign languages.

Your colleagues/clients will be more likely to trust what

you are saying and there will be a more intimate

communication through a translator. This could be an

important step in building strong and lasting business
relationships that help ensure the success of your own
business.
More and more school are recognizing the importance
of language. Some schools begin offering to teach a
second language as early as middle school. Many schools
and employers are requiring specific language
requirements as part of their application process.

4. Importance of Languages
for Understanding Culture

Knowledge of other languages, as well as their culture,

shows that you respect the ideas that they bring to the
table and you understand their needs and wants better
than somebody who does not have this background.
Through language, we can connect with other people
and make sense of our experiences.

Our language is the most important part of our

being. It’s important to learn other languages besides
our own because it helps us to learn about other
peoples and cultures but the most important one that
we can learn is our own mother tongue as this is one
of the most basic parts of our identity.

If we lose our own tongue, for example, when we grow

up in a country which is not our own, in my opinion,
we are losing a part of ourselves. It is an important
attribute of his personality.

5. Importance of Languages
for Developing Children
Imagine what it must be like for your child to develop
these skills that we take for granted.
As a parent, teacher, or another type of caregiver, you
shape a child’s language development to reflect the
identity, values, and experiences of your family and
community. Therefore, it is up to you to create a
warm and comfortable environment in which your
child can grow to learn the complexities of language.
The communication skills that your child learns early in
life will be the foundation for his or her communication
abilities in the future. Strong language skills are an
asset that will promote a lifetime of effective
communication.

MEANING OF LINGUISTIC
CHAUVINISM
'Linguistic chauvinism' means an aggressive and
unreasonable belief that your own language is better
than all others. This shows an excessive or prejudiced
support for one's own language. Sometimes pride in
one's own language goes too for and the linguistic
enthusiasts can be easily identified by their extreme
zeal for the preservation and spread of their language.
In their enthusiasm, love and support for their own
language, they tend to forget that other languages too
have their own merits, long history of art, culture and
literature behind them. Instead of bringing unity and
winning over others as friends, having excessive pride
in one's own language creates ill-will and disintegration.
The stiff-resistance to the acceptance of Hindi as
national language by the southern states of India is a
direct outcome of the fear of being dominated by Hindi
enthusiasts. The result is that 'One India' remains only
a slogan.

EXAMPLES IN HISTORY
WHERE A CONQUERED
PEOPLE HAD THEIR
LANGUAGE TAKEN AWAY
FROM THEM OR HAD A
LANGUAGE IMPOSED ON
THEM
Mother tongue helps a person to express his feelings
and thoughts most lucidly and intimately. Conquerors
try to subdue and control the people of the enslaved
territory by enforcing many measures such as use of
force to crush dissent and imposing their own language
on them.
From time immemorial the victorious nations have
imposed their own language on the conquered people
and taken away their own language from them. The
Romans conquered many parts of Europe and replaced
the local languages by their own language— Latin.
Later on Spanish, Pourtuguese, Italian and French
developed from Latin. The Muslim invaders imposed
Arabic and Persian in the countries of Asia
overpowered by them. In many Arab countries the
local religion and language have disappeared. In India,
a new language Urdu developed from the mixture of
Persian and Hindi.
PROBLEMS FACED BY
LINGUISTIC MINORITY
Linguistic minorities are segregated from the rest of
the community by their language, which limits their
opportunities in terms of education, employment and
in general economic and political life. They have access
only to a very limited proportion of the information
generated in society, as media and governments are
not able or willing to provide more than the minimum
in minority languages. Their only recourse may be to
give up their language and become assimilated into the
culture of the dominant language, thereby losing the
unifying basis of their culture.

In the case of pluralistic societies more than one

language may be official, but one language may
predominate over the others, giving greater
opportunities to one group. In societies where only one
language is official other language groups may consist
of immigrants or colonized indigenous people. If
immigrants learn the official language imperfectly or
simply prefer their own, a ghetto situation arises,
creating a very closed-in community, perpetuating its
own education and community life apart from the
community at large and often at a lower level, leaving
the way open for social conflict. Indigenous people may
be officially deprived of their language in order to
'nationalize' them; and poor linguistic communication
may make it difficult for national authorities to render
adequate social services.

HOW CAN THEY KEEP

THEIR LANGUAGE ALIVE
There is no doubt that it is hard work to try to keep a
minority language alive. The reality is a lot of people
give up. Scientists estimate that one language
disappears every 14 days. There are different ideas
about the best ways to preserve a language. One way is
to encourage younger generations to speak the
language as they grow, so they will then teach their
children the language as well. In many cases, this
option is nearly impossible. There are often many
factors that endanger a language, and it is impossible
to control each of these factors to ensure its survival.

The internet can be used to raise awareness about the

issues of language extinction and language preservation.
It can be used to translate, catalog, store, and provide
information and access to languages. New technologies
such as podcasts can be used to preserve the spoken
versions of languages, and written documents can
preserve information about the native literature and
linguistics of languages.

The international internet provider VeriSign estimates

that 65-70% of all internet content is in English.[5]

Using written documents to preserve information

about the native literature and linguistics is also not
without potential problems. Just because a language is
written down, this does not mean it will survive.
Written information in book or manuscript form is
subject to acid issues, binding problems, environmental
monitoring problems, and security concerns.

Technology can also be used to preserve the integrity of

spoken versions of languages. Many of the same
techniques used in recording oral history can be used to
preserve spoken languages. Preservationists can use
reel-to-reel audio tape recordings, along with video
recordings, and new technologies like podcasts to
record spoken accounts of languages. Technology is also
vulnerable to new technology. Preservation efforts
would fail if the technology to listen to or watch
certain media such as audio tape recordings or video
tapes is lost.

The Administration for Native Americans has published

the "Reference Guide for Establishing Archives and
Repositories," which explains why language repositories
are vital to long-term language preservation efforts.[6]
The guide offers practical advice on what to preserve
and why; it explains what a language repository is,
how to build one, and the costs involved; and lists
other resources for creating an archive and repository.
LINGUISTIC HUMAN
RIGHTS
Linguistic rights are the human and civil rights
concerning the individual and collective right to choose
the language or languages for communication in a
private or public atmosphere. Other parameters for
analyzing linguistic rights include the degree of
territoriality, amount of positivity, orientation in terms
of assimilation or maintenance, and overtness.[1]

Linguistic rights include, among others, the right to

one's own language in legal, administrative and judicial
acts, language education, and media in a language
understood and freely chosen by those concerned.

Linguistic rights in international law are usually dealt

in the broader framework of cultural and educational
rights.
Important documents for linguistic rights include the
Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (1996), the
European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
(1992), the Convention on the Rights of the Child
(1989) and the Framework Convention for the
Protection of National Minorities (1988), as well as
Convention against Discrimination in Education[2] and
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(1966).[3]

LINGUISTIC CHAUVINISM
EXAMPLES FROM
LITERATURE
Linguistic chauvinism is a term applied to the concept
of preference for one language over another.
Fundamentally, it has a negative connotation
associated with superiority, but on a broader level the
chauvinism toward one language over another is
equally applicable to multilingual circumstances in
which that spoken by the majority would be deemed
the “official” language: such as in America. In the case
of this story, thematic exploration of linguistic
chauvinism references both the passion expressed by
the characters toward the loss of the French language
being taught in school as well as the oppressive
introduction of German as the new official language of
the region in the wake of its annexation as a
negotiation for a peaceful end to the Franco-Prussian
War. Suffice to say that the unwritten part of this
story is the equitable scene of celebrations going on
somewhere in favor of German replacing French as the
language taught in schools within the annexed territory.

The story explores a theme often found in literature

that questions what constitutes a national identity.
What is about a nationality that creates a collective
feeling of belonging among a constituency that differs
so substantially among other characteristics associated
with cultural distinction. What unifies Swedish people
as Swedes: blond hair, light complexion, a hardy
resistance to frigid climate? Or is that the Swedish
language? Not all Swedes are blond nor lightly
complexioned nor inherently capable of withstanding
freezing winter, but a commonality of language binds
them all to their cultural heritage through facilitation
of communication. This conception of language as key
to national identity is even more pronounced in
countries like France where physical distinctions are
much more diverse than in Sweden—or Kenya or
Japan, for instance. If language is the primal element
in constituting a cultural identity based on nationalist
sentiment, then what would be the effect of an
oppressive foreign intruder attempting to erase that
language and impose its own upon the populace? That
is consequence the author is asking his reader to
imagine.