Por:

Estefania Botero
Santiago Muñoz
Indigenous languages, a dying legacy.

Linguistic diversity is essential in the heritage of humanity. Each language embodies the
unique cultural wisdom of a people. Therefore, the loss of any language is a
loss for all humanity.
Although there are still approximately 6,000 languages according to UNESCO, many are
threatened. For reinforce its vitality it is necessary to proceed with its documentation,
adopt new policies linguistics and produce new materials.
Countering this threat will require the cooperative efforts of communities, language
specialists, NGOs, and public authorities. It is urgent to create support for language
communities that strive to provide new and constructive functions to their languages in
danger.
In all parts of the world, ethnolinguistic minorities increasingly tend to abandon their
mother tongue for the benefit of other languages, also regarding the upbringing of children,
formal education, and new employments opportunities.
Ultimately it is the speakers, not outsiders, who retain, or they abandon a language.
However, if communities request help to strengthen their endangered languages, linguists
and the government must put their skills at their disposal and work with those
ethnolinguistic minorities.

According to BBC reports, communication is fundamental in all societies and the existence
of languages can plays an important role in the defense of human rights and peace.
languages provide unique knowledge and ways of understanding the world differently.
furthermore, they can express and define different cultures around the world which make
them unique.

Most of the languages that are in danger of extinction are spoken by indigenous peoples.
This communities are commonly located far from urban areas and there are a lot of
reasons why their languages tend to disappear.
As David Harrison, president of the linguistics department at Swarthmore College and co-
founder of the NGO Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages point out in his
article, indigenous languages disappear for some reasons, forced relocations, the
discrimination to children in schools, migration for economic reasons and the social
pressure to speak the dominant languages.

I support what BBC and NGOs reports says, because to preserve a language people must
be able to appreciate and respect cultural diversity, Also the government should train
professionals involved in strengthening languages and find the way to preserve an
endangered of extinction language.
In my opinion, I think that to reconstruct or revive an endangered language government
must to include a subject in schools that show and define each ancient language of a
region in order to make known to people the existence of these forms of expression. This
alternatives to preserve endangered languages were proposed by indigenous communities
to the government looking for help doing everything possible so that their languages are
not drastically extinct and the way of expressing and communicating between these
communities that are part of a country's biodiversity does not die.