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The Linguists: Boarding Schools

Decent Essays

The Linguists Linguists study language because they are concerned about the amount of languages disappearing. In the video it states, “One language is lost per two weeks.” When a language dies, some kind of unique world could be lost. Gregory and David are visiting places that are most in need. These places tend to be smaller in population. Younger children are typically the ones to stop speaking the indigenous language. I believe since they’re language is not as popular and most these languages don’t have a written form, it would be easier to learn a different language for learning purposes. Maybe schools are the ones who don’t teach these indigenous languages to them. Boarding schools in some of these places bring in groups of minorities of tribes to a central location to teach them. In the video, the boarding school in India brought in 60 tribes around the location to teach them English, and the practice of Hindu religion which presents subtle pressure on the children’s identity. The learn many valuables skills at boarding schools but bringing in of many different types of groups affects their learning about their origin tribe or group. When the kids go home they do not speak their origin language as much or even at all. Older generations tend to be the only fluent speakers of these dying languages. Parents even in their fifties or sixties are considered to not speak their origin language because this way of education started around their time. There is a way to resolve this conflict, and that is if every indigenous group had a school of their own. This would be a solution but many of these places can probably not afford a school for their indigenous group. There is a solution but it is a question if the solution could be realistic for the communities or not. Since most of the tribes are not Hindu yet they’re learning Hindu at the school. This may show up in census of religion in areas not being of their origin religion but as Hindu. Younger children’s may mostly convert to Hindu because that is what they are taught in school thus making their indigenous group’s language one step closer to being extinct. Elicitation is a technique of getting any of a number of data collection. This relates to the film

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