Language death or murder?
Tariq Rahman*
Language death occurs when the last speaker of a language dies. The world has about 6,000 plus languages but they are dying at an alarming rate. This phenomenon has been hastened by modern means of communication, the pressure of finding employment, education, commerce and the provision of services globally in the major languages of the world, but not in the mother-tongues of small groups of people. The phenomenon is also caused by certain language and education policies because of which it is also called ‘language murder’ and English is dubbed as the major ‘killer language’. Others point out that small and weak communities abandon their languages intentionally since they consider them ghettoizing so the phenomenon should be called ‘language suicide’. A neutral term ‘language shift’ is used by the sociolinguist Joshua Fishman.

In Pakistan, a number of languages have died and others are in danger. There are, however, steps to reverse ‘language shift’ by languages for teaching little children, on radio/television and in jobs. The paper points out that Pakistan’s language and education policies are causing ‘language death’ of some of our languages and there are very few efforts being made to reverse this phenomenon.

* Dr. Tariq Rahman is HEC Distinguished National Professor and Professor Emeritus, Dean School of Education at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore, Pakistan.