Takeaway Week 6

Garcia, Ofelia. "Positioning Heritage Languages in the United States." The Modern
Language Journal 89.4 (2005): 601-05. Web. 6 May 2015.
Our speaker today mentioned this, and I thought it was interesting that the word,
"heritage" could have a negative connotation where its meaning could be
associated to the past, and therefore a lot of speakers find the term, "heritage
language", derogatory and inferior to languages that aren't referred to as "heritage
languages" (e.g. English). English has become so dominant, and therefore
sometimes people can be ignorant to this term, and I have to admit that I never
made this connection before today or before having read this article.
It's always interesting to hear different viewpoints on how money is being used
towards education, such as the Bilingual Education Act; a lot of people, in my
opinion, would argue that this act and the money going to this act would only help
immigrants, people who aren't citizens, and people who aren't paying taxes, when
in reality, a majority went into helping Mexican Americans and Native Americans
learn English and transition into this culture. I suppose sometimes it's important to
take into account that although in this case, this act wasn't aimed towards
immigrants, it's important to help others acclimate into society and into what's
unfortunately turning into an English-dominant society, because if the government
doesn't help them, it'll be hard for them to find the resources that will.
This article stated that the term, "heritage language" actually originated and was
popularized in Canada. Is this term now seen as negatively in Canada as it is in
the United States, or is there a higher tolerance for multi-lingualism in Canada?
Mcwhorter, John. "The Cosmopolitan Tongue." World Affairs 172.2 (2009): 61-68. Web.
6 May 2015.
I think it's difficult to be responsible for so many languages, especially when there
are more than six thousand currently in the world and when their successes differ
quite greatly. Although it's saddening when the death of a language occurs, with
so many people separating their indigenous languages from their daily lives due to
the dominancy of one language over another, it will always be a challenge
preserving a minority language; for example, this article states that many children
speak one language at home and another outside of home, and in this way
(although I do this myself as well), this language cannot grow further outside of
the family.
McWhorter makes an interesting point when it comes to the development of
languages and how time and place could alter a language completely into two or
more completely different ones in which one is unintelligible to the other. I
suppose this leaves me with the question that although many languages are dying,
should we prevent the emersion of these newly forming languages or encourage
them - which one is important or are they collectively considered a problem?
I wish people could find the beauty in other languages in which they would find
the passion or motivation to preserve these languages rather than seeing this large
list of languages as daunting - although I realize it's a commonly spoken
language, I found beauty in the French language and this pushed me to learn this

language starting from my years in middle school. If only everyone could find one
other language that they find fascinating, beautiful, or worth preserving, I think
it's possible that the attrition of languages could definitely slow down.