Several languages are in danger of extinction because they are spoken by very small numbers of people. Some people say that governments should spend public money on saving these languages, while others believe that it would be a waste of money.
Discuss both of these views and give your opinion.
People remain divided over whether minority languages should be preserved or not. While a school of thought holds that governments should fund the preservation of these languages, others believe that saving them would be a waste of money. Personally, I agree with the former view because if these languages died out, so would the history and the culture they represent.
On the one hand, it is understandable why some people advocate letting these endangered languages vanish. The rationale might be because extinction is an integral part of the natural process of evolution in which strong languages will thrive while the weak ones diminish. As a result, spending public money protecting something that would eventually disappear is therefore pointless, given that many states are under a constraint budget these days. Furthermore, there are other more important domains such as education and healthcare that need investment, and the improvements in these sectors could benefit the public as a whole.
On the other hand, I would concur with those who believe that states should foot the bill to save endangered languages as they are a major component of the living culture and history of our society. In other words, protecting those on the brink of extinction also means preserving our culture and history. For example, many tribes pass on their customs and traditions to the next generations via story-telling and verbal communication instead of documentation. Therefore, those who spoke minority languages are the representatives of their civilization. As governments have already invested an enormous sum of money in the preservation of history and culture, I believe that there’s no reason why they should not do the same with languages.
In conclusion, while there are reasons to support allowing less widely spoken languages to disappear, I believe that these languages represent a part of humans’ history and cultural heritage, and therefore should be protected.
Từ vựng nổi bật
- School of thought: Một luồng ý kiến, quan điểm
- Die out: Trở nên ít phổ biến hơn và cuối cùng không còn tồn tại
- Advocate: Biện hộ
- Rationale: Cơ sở lý luận, hành động
- Thrive: Phát triển
- Diminish: Giảm về kích thước hoặc tầm quan trọng
- Foot the bill: chi trả cho điều gì