Speech Practice

75. Answer the questions to clarify specific points from the text.

1. What is the gist of the initiative of Guernsey’s community?

2. Is this the first instance that an endangered language is being rescued?

3. Are there success stories in minnow language preservation?

4. How has the attitude to ancestral tongues changed compared to one century ago?

5. What turned to be the stronghold protecting patois, dialects and minority languages?

6. Is the situation with language preservation universally good?

7. What pushes young people to switch to alien languages?

8. What is the situation like with Urdu and Yiddish?

9. What is unromantic about the fusion of all into one English-speaking whole?

10. What is more probable projection for language transmutations?

11. Might English replicate the destiny of Latin in the long haul?

12. What is really dramatic about a language going into non-existence?

13. How is the mother tongue or native language akin to DNA?

Talking and Discussions

For long historic periods Ukraine was fragmented, fell under the rule of other nations and Ukrainian diasporas were formed within other countries. This forced Ukrainian-speaking communities to develop their language only within their limited geographical areas, coining or borrowing new words, modifying grammar under the influence of official languages, altering the phonetic system being detached or isolated from the rest of Ukrainian speakers, creating new phraseology and own literature – thus creating patois and dialects.

4. Now answer these questions with regard to the Ukrainian context.

1. Has time come to launch projects akin to Guernsey’s with regard to Ukrainian dialects within and beyond the country?

2. What can we gain and how can we profit from these studies?

3. Are these dialects protected from extinction?

4. Is there an ancestral linguistic tradition in your DNA?

5. Can the word stock and grammar systems of Ukrainian dialects contribute to Standard Ukrainian?

6. How may English affect the Ukrainian language?

5. There comes a comment on the article “When languages die, whole worlds die too” by Richard Morrison. What do you second and which ideas do you oppose?

Edward O'Brien, June 02, 2013

Richard Morrison is right about one thing, and wrong about the rest. It is of course, true that old and near extinct languages are a valuable reminder of historical cultures, but it is overly¹² sentimental to suggest a whole world is lost when one finally becomes extinct. I have visited the Republic of Ireland, which, like Wales, fights to retain its origins in its language while having already lost the battle. This is despite public notices and many services being provided in Irish - as well as English. All the business people I spoke to spoke only English - other than the word Garda (the police).

Language is first useful and, second, romantic. When the first becomes obsolete¹³, the latter becomes: well, romantic, but of no value.

A dominant language does not come about by design¹⁴, planning or learning per se¹⁵. It becomes dominant through usage, and usage becomes dominant because it is easier and ultimately more useful. English, in the next 150 years will become the international language. It is almost certain that the last to fall will be France who, even now, fight vigorously to stem the insurgence of English into their culture. And they are losing...

But, when the final day comes, it will not be the end of France, but very likely a new beginning. For by then, hardly anyone will be speaking French!..