maintaining languages and its problems

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Thank you for your text send with your e-mail, Mr. Allwood. It is nice to hear that you agree with me in many points. In which points do you not agree with me?
 
I would say that survival-kits are, in another word, simply documents that may give access to the full range of a language to non-native speakers, be it written texts, tapes or videos. Actually, every more or less mighty language has something what we could call survival-kits which are evem more necessary for lesser used languages. But in the case of more mighty languages, it is not the pure survival of the language itself, but the survival of certain skills in the native language that civilisations need to keep themselves going.
 
I have read the arguments against as well as for maintaining of languages. The arguments given against linguistic diversity do not convince me of the use to drop most languages. The aims given as reasons to let languages go are well served if everybody learns an international lingua franca in addition to the native and/or regional language in order to be understood and make you understand internationally. 
 
Misunderstandings can well occur between speakers of the same language as the meaning of words and sentences can vary due to some factors beside the pure speech. If persons really want, they will probably make sure that they understand the essential, right sense of each other´s speech even if one or both of the persons do not dominate the language perfectly. 
 
If efforts are meaningless depends on the concerned people themselves. If everybody of the community wants to keep the own language, then it will live on. In Irish, there is a good sentence:"Speak it (the language) and it will live!". At least in countries without severe forces like forbiddings, heavy fines, poverty or even murderings, everybody in a people has the choice to pass the native language on to children. In more or less free and wellbeing countries, everybody has some responsibility for the language´s future in his or her surroundings.
 
One strong argument to pass languages on to children is indeed that some people among the generations living during the process of language shift will suffer of the gradual loss. And this process can endure for several generations, even after the task language has already been lost as regular spoken language. This is surely the main reason that language shif does rarely go on without upcoming counter movements. Even those who do not matter themselves about maintaining languages, have to admit that a civilized society ought to support cultural and social efforts of its citizens. 
 
Languages in industrialized countries and those of indigenous peoples in countries dominated by settlers surely have different challenges. In industrialized countries, it is the half-heartedness and or even cultural decadency of numerous people which does harm to lesser used languages whereas indigenous peoples often face societal burdens. This makes the setting up of own actions to maintain the own language more difficult for many indigenous peoples than for people in industrialized countries . Furthermore, many indigenous peoples are quite or very small which means few power within mainstream society.
 
One factor of vital languages is also a balance between assimilating foreign persons into the own speech community and loosing persons to other languages. Endangered languages most often loose the power to assimilate foreign persons. At the end, no speech community can afford to focus only on the own indigenous community. For in the world of today, no people can survive without overregional contacts. Smaller peoples can do even worse without contacts outside the own community with the wider surroundings. 
 
Therefore it is necessary to convince people of foreign origin and in the wider surroundings that it is worth learning regional or indigenous languages. The support from non-native people or those of neighbouring areas/countries will at any rate strengthen endangered languages. Some people can be convinced of the language´s worth for themselves by getting in touch with these languages as children. Therefore regional/indigenous languages as core subjects for all pupils does make absolute sense in many areas around the world.
By doing so, everybody will get easy access to the task language.
In my point of view, it is an absolute mistake in the case of indigenous languages if the focus is laid nearly exclusively on the indigenous people themselves.
 
For example, in Ireland it makes absolutely sense that children of any foreign background have Irish as core subject at school, too. For the Irish language is of worth for everybody living in Ireland. 
 
Happy Easter Days,
 
Alex
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