The Revival of Scottish Gaelic Through Education
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The Revival of Scottish Gaelic Through Education By Michael McIn ...

Chapter 2:  Why Heritage Language Revival?
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even its advocates admit has little economic, which is to say functional, value?

It's for this reason that I think it useful and relevant to examine the other claims for language—that is, the claims other than that it empowers one to access a job market. In this chapter, I will review arguments that support heritage language maintenance and revival and the history of such efforts. The arguments in favor of language maintenance and language revival are thus:

  • Argument 1: The negative impact of language death—languages are dying and humanity is losing a valuable human resource; the implication of this observation is that efforts must be extended to save endangered languages;
  • Argument 2: Whorfian culture-in-language—each language represents a distinct worldview;
  • Argument 3: Language as a source of identity—people use language not just as a tool for communication, but also as a source of personal and group identity;
  • Argument 4: Language rights—the collective rights of language/ethnic groups;
  • Argument 5: Language as heritage—the urge to speak the language of one's people who came before.

    • Language Death and the Loss of Knowledge

    It is not merely a writer's conceit to think that the human world is made of words and to remember that no two words in all the world's languages are alike. … I saw this once, in the forest of southern Mexico, when a butterfly settled beside me. The color of it was a blue unlike any I had ever seen, hue and intensity beyond naming. … There are nine different words in Maya for the color blue … but just three Spanish translations, leaving six butterflies that can be seen only by the Maya, proving beyond doubt that