Ideology of Language

Language is so important to any culture that is trying to thrive and be revitalized. If a language is not spoken in a certain community, the number of native speakers will just keep dwindling down because they’re not practicing the language daily and teaching it to their children. In some cases though, it’s hard to keep the language going when people in control are telling you not to, and that it’s not okay. Kind of like the Sami language with the Sami people. I watched a video about their language saying that only 1/3 of the Sami still speak it, because the authorities have been telling them for a while through many different sources that the Sami language is no good. And in the video, they say that this influence was so strong that parents started to believe that it might be risky for their children to learn and speak the language. This is why they stopped teaching it to their kids. More parents are realizing now that that was wrong and are now learning and teaching the language. In the reading, The Sami Case, by Håkan Rydving, it says that it seemed incomprehensible that the Sami have kept their language, but the explanation is that they have lived isolated from the Norwegians with an economy based almost only on reindeer.  But the Sami were economically dependent on Norwegian methods of working and on the Norwegian language, so it was fairly hard for them to keep their language still thriving. But they did, and now, more and more they are trying to revitalize the language and have many more speakers. The Sami peoples story of their language related so much to the Hawaiian language’s history. They both went through hard times but ultimately, both the Sami people and the Hawaiians are now revitalized and thriving; growing each day, which is how it should be so that the language is never lost.


References:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkG7psgdl1o

http://ir.minpaku.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/10502/1049/1/SES66_027.pdf