Q. Every year several languages die out. Some people think that this is not important because life will be easier if there are fewer languages in the world. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?

At these days, some people believe that the pace of the disappearance of languages is quite alarming whereas other people is convinced that the matter is not worrisome issue since they believe there is some benefit we can expect from the phenomenon such as less burden to learn the decreased number of languages. However I personally believe that it is quite rediculous idea that we should welcome the circumstance of disappearing languages because we will be less stressful from the learning of languages.

First of all, the biggest problem we encounter from the languages disappearance is that we are losing the medium to understand other ethnic group’ culture and tradition. Most of civilization leave their the most precious knowledge and experience in the form of character. If we failed to preserve their own languages, there is no other way to obtain their the most valuable cultural heritage. There are many cases, that we cannot interpreset ancestor’s monuments since we do not have the ancestor’s language, in our history as well.

Secondly, it is common sense that language is quite closely related with the identity of people. Usually we can distinguish ourselves with other people in terms of the languages we or they speak. For instance, the first thing Japanese goverment did under Japanese rule in Korea is to eradicate our language because they believed that the first step to destroy our tradition and identity should be started on forcing them to use Japanese language. But we tenaciously resisted their unreasonable rule so that we can finally preserve our identity as well as language, which lead to the independence of the colony.

To sum up, as suggested above, language disappearance seems to have more negative impact on people than the benefits we can expect. Therefore, we should zero in on how to preserve and inherit our prolific languages to our next generation to come.