The evolutionary process is unstoppable around the world. There are many dialects of english in use. The Pidgin english flourishing in New Guinea, originally devised as a practical business language, reduced to its simplest elements, has evolved its own rich character. In the same way English-speaking communities in the West Indies or in India, or even America have developed local words, phrases and constructions which give English its own flair. There are about 6500 languages in the world and about 2600 of them are endangered. The kinds of rich literature formed over millennia, their philosophies and ideologies that we cannot afford to lose. Grammar and linguistic structure vary from language to language, deepening our knowledge on how languages themselves can vary from one another. To ensure that this vast bundle of progress and data isn’t lost, we must preserve more languages, and revitalize those that are in danger.

We conducted two surveys to investigate the general opinion on preservation of languages. The first survey was of 54 students of our school, a private international school in Bangalore. We do not consider our results to be representative of the rest of the Indian population. We found from the survey that most of our sample think learning other languages is beneficial, but many of them do not believe it is important to learn indigenous languages. Most of them can speak their native language, but only 65% can read and write it. Our second survey was of 33 relatives and neighbours. Most of them said that they had seen English and Hindi gain popularity, while local languages grew less popular.

A variety of language resuscitation and protection measures of endangered languages have been implemented over the years. Some notable examples include introduction of Article 350(A), the inception of The State Reorganisation Committee(SRC) in 1956, The Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages (SPPEL) brought into existence in 2013, rescindment of the Criminal tribal Act brought about by the British-India government in 1871, Scheme of Safeguard for linguistic minorities by the SRC, and other such government efforts that have lacked homogeneous public support. Private digital facilities like wikitongues, duolingo,and rosetta stone among others that document languages from around the globe and encourage language learning have been successful, with profuse public support, in delaying and even avoiding extinction of languages. However, this still falls short. India has lost 220 languages in the last five decades alone and this can be reversed with  2% corporate social responsibility (CSR) being spent on saving languages and crafts, documenting them and building accessibility tools. Such databases could then be utilised for linguistic research, linking languages from the same families. This, of course, demands your support - as citizens, as learners and as responsible cultural citizens of the world.

Show your support by signing this petition!