What Happens When We Lose a Language?
What happens when lose a language? - Article in The Guardian
The databases that do exist, such as Ethnologue, chart unfathomable cultural riches contained within more than 7,000 known living languages. But a staggering 44% of these are now classed endangered, many of them with fewer than 1,000 speakers left. One-nation-one-language narratives lull us into assuming France speaks French, China speaks Mandarin; this ignores the tens and even hundreds of regional languages, many of whose speakers have experienced everything from active persecution to bans in school to simply feeling stigmatised for speaking their mother tongue.
A staggering 44% of human languages are endangered – with culture, tradition and whole ways of understanding the world at stake.
Over the next 40 years, language loss has been predicted to triple without intervention. Yet we hear about language endangerment far less often than we hear about other wounding losses to our planet’s diversity or history.
Pali is the language in which most of the important Buddhist scriptures and philosphical treatises have been written. The study of an ancient language which is no longer in daily use helps us understand the social conditions and the reasons for the rise of new schools of thoughts in ancient India. The sophistication of ancient Indian pholosophies requires the scholars to understand precise meanings of words, many of which can be ambiguous. Every philosophy in ancient and medieval India is seen to have a simplified version for the common people and a sophisticated version for the scholarly. It is easy to misunderstand especially when original texts are lost and weare dependent on secondary sources.
While, we are already aware of the damage caused due to loss of a language, such articles show the extent of damage caused by loss of a language in other material terms.
The Return of Sanskrit
There is a word in Sanskrit used commonly—punarjanma—which means rebirth. It signifies transmigration of a soul across lifetimes, with every incarnation bearing the karmic residue of everything that came before. It is, perhaps, the most useful lens through which to understand what is happening to Sanskrit itself right now. It is a return, not resurrection. The language of the gods was never quite dead; it stayed woven into the cultural and intellectual fabric of the country. Sanskrit has witnessed a quiet yet steady resurgence in recent years. Once perceived largely as a classical or liturgical language, it is now increasingly being approached as a living intellectual tradition—one that offers access not just to scriptures, but to philosophy, linguistics, literature, mathematics, and even environmental thought embedded in ancient texts. Across India and among diaspora communities, new learners are discovering Sanskrit through yoga philosophy, chanting, digital courses, and conversational programmes, giving the language a renewed contemporary relevance.
Archeaology Findings at Ratnagiri - Article in The Hindu
Archeaology Findings at Ratnagiri - Article in The Indian Express
Archeaology Findings at Ratnagiri - Article in The Indian Express
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International Institute of Pali, Sanskrit and Comparative Philosophy
Gulbarga