Language and communication

Model introduction (~85 words):

Of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken today, UNESCO warns that a large share are endangered, prompting the claim that we should do far more to save them. Yet "saving" can mean anything from cheaply recording a language to the costly effort of reviving everyday use. This essay will argue that we should document every endangered language and actively revive those whose communities want it, because a language carries irreplaceable knowledge and identity — and successes such as the te reo Māori revival show that loss is not inevitable.

Bullet-point plan:

• Body 1 (FOR): Languages carry unique knowledge, stories and identity — losing one is like losing a species. Link: the value justifies effort.
• Body 2 (FOR): Revival is possible and restores community pride — te reo Māori (NZ) and Welsh show real success through education and broadcasting. Link: effort works where the community drives it.
• Counterargument: Revival is expensive and a shared dominant language brings opportunity — but documentation is cheap, and benefit need not require letting languages die.
• Conclusion: Document all, revive where communities want it — because a language is irreplaceable and Māori proves loss is not inevitable.

One reason to doubt that digital communication is harming language is that abbreviation and informal coinage are not new but are, in fact, how living languages have always grown. (Point) Texting and social media have generated a stream of neologisms — "selfie", "streaming" and the verb "to google" — that have entered mainstream dictionaries precisely because they usefully name new realities, just as English has always borrowed and invented words. (Example) This suggests that what older critics perceive as decline is often ordinary language change: a sign that the language is alive and adapting, not breaking down, since a language that stopped changing, like Latin in everyday use, would be the one in trouble. (Analysis) The genuine concern is narrower: not that texting "ruins" English, but that heavy informal use may weaken some writers' ability to switch into the formal register required in academic or professional contexts. (Analysis) Digital communication is therefore better understood as expanding language while raising a real question about register, rather than as harming language in any general sense — a distinction this essay will develop. (Link)

English has become the world's leading lingua franca — the common tongue of business, science, aviation and the internet — and whether this does more harm than good is now a genuine question rather than an obvious one. By "harm" I mean the loss of linguistic diversity and the disadvantaging of non-native speakers, and by "good" the cooperation and access that a shared language enables. This essay argues that the spread of English does more good than harm overall, but only if its benefits are paired with deliberate protection of other languages.

The strongest case for English is that it acts as a bridge between people who share no other language. A Korean scientist, a Brazilian engineer and a Nigerian businessperson can collaborate through English, and a vast body of research and information published in English becomes accessible to anyone who learns it. A simplified working core, sometimes nicknamed "Globish", allows even imperfect speakers to communicate across borders. For trade, science and diplomacy, a single shared language reduces friction in a way that benefits the whole world.

However, the same dominance carries real costs. As English spreads, it can crowd out smaller languages: younger speakers may abandon their mother tongue for the language that offers jobs and status, accelerating the language death that already threatens many of the world's roughly 7,000 languages. The advantage it gives native speakers in international business and academia is also a form of inequality. Some nations resist actively — the Académie française has long tried to protect French from English loanwords, promoting French alternatives to terms such as "email" — which shows how genuine the fear of linguistic erosion is.

It might be objected that English is simply a neutral, practical tool, and that blaming it for language death confuses a symptom with a cause — languages were dying long before English became global. There is force in this: the deeper driver is the economic pull of dominant languages generally, not English specifically. Yet a tool that systematically draws speakers away from their mother tongues is not neutral in its effects, and the success of the te reo Māori revival in New Zealand shows both that the pull is real and that deliberate effort can counter it. English need not be abandoned, but its spread must be matched by active support for diversity.

Complaints that English is "going downhill" are as old as the language itself, but whether change really means decline is far less obvious than critics assume. By "for the worse" I take the claim to mean that the language is becoming less precise, less correct or less expressive. This essay argues that English is not changing for the worse but simply changing, as all living languages must, and that what looks like decline is usually adaptation.

The first reason to reject the "decline" view is that change is what keeps a language alive. English constantly generates new words for new realities — "selfie", "streaming", "to google" — and has always absorbed words from other languages, from French and Latin to Hindi. A language that stopped changing would not be purer but dead, as Latin became once it ceased to be anyone's everyday speech. Far from impoverishing English, this constant renewal expands what speakers are able to express.

A second point exposes the hidden assumption behind the complaint: that there is one fixed "correct" English from which we are falling away. In reality, what we call "standard" English is simply the variety that gained prestige through power and education, not an eternal standard of correctness. Regional dialects and slang, often dismissed as "wrong", are fully rule-governed and rich in identity. Judging all change against one prestige form is therefore a value judgement, not evidence of genuine decline.

Against this, it could be argued that some change does represent real loss: useful distinctions can blur, careless spelling spread through digital writing, and a flood of English loanwords can dilute other languages. This deserves to be taken seriously rather than dismissed. Yet even here the problem is better described as a question of register and education — of helping people command formal English when they need it — than as the language itself decaying. The remedy is teaching, not lament. On balance, English is changing as it always has, and labelling that change "for the worse" reflects nostalgia more than analysis.

The claim that the spread of English does more harm than good has obvious appeal in an age anxious about cultural homogenisation, yet its strength depends entirely on how the costs and benefits are weighed. By "harm" I mean the erosion of linguistic diversity and the disadvantaging of those who must learn English as an additional language; by "good" I mean the cooperation, access and opportunity that a shared global tongue provides. This essay argues that the spread of English does more good than harm, but only on the condition that its dominance is consciously balanced by efforts to protect other languages — without which the proposition becomes far more persuasive.

The central benefit of a global lingua franca is that it allows humanity to communicate across boundaries that would otherwise divide it. English now functions as the working language of international science, business, aviation and the internet, so that a Korean researcher, a Brazilian engineer and a Nigerian entrepreneur can collaborate without a shared mother tongue. A simplified core, sometimes called "Globish", lets even imperfect speakers exchange ideas, and an enormous body of knowledge published in English becomes available to anyone who learns it. For an interconnected world facing shared problems — disease, climate, trade — the value of a common medium is hard to overstate, and for individuals, competence in English can be genuinely empowering.

Yet the harms are real and must be confronted rather than waved away. The dominance of English exerts a constant pull on speakers of smaller languages: younger generations, seeing English as the route to jobs and status, may abandon their mother tongue, accelerating the language death that already endangers a large share of the world's roughly 7,000 languages. Because a language carries unique knowledge, stories and identity, each loss is irreversible. There is also an equity cost: native English speakers enjoy an unearned advantage in global business and academia, while others must invest years to compete on the same terms. That some nations resist — the Académie française has long defended French against English loanwords, promoting native alternatives to words like "email" — shows how seriously the threat of linguistic erosion is taken.

The decisive question is whether these harms are intrinsic to English or contingent on how its spread is managed. Here the evidence suggests they are contingent. The deeper cause of language death is the economic pull of dominant languages in general, not English in particular; languages were disappearing long before English became global. More importantly, the te reo Māori revival in New Zealand — achieved through "language nests", broadcasting and official recognition — and the parallel revival of Welsh demonstrate that the pull towards a dominant language can be deliberately resisted where communities and governments choose to act. The spread of English does not have to mean the death of everything else.

It might still be objected that goodwill is no match for economic reality, and that minority languages will inevitably lose ground however hard their speakers try. This is the strongest version of the case against English, and it cannot be dismissed lightly. Yet it proves too much: the same logic would have predicted the extinction of Welsh and Māori, both of which have instead grown in speakers and prestige. The objection underestimates human agency and the value people place on their own identity. The realistic conclusion is not despair but conditional optimism.

In conclusion, I disagree with the proposition as stated. The spread of English does more good than harm, because the cooperation, access and opportunity it provides are immense, while its most serious harm — the erosion of other languages — is not inevitable but a problem of management, as the Māori and Welsh revivals prove. English is therefore best understood not as a destroyer of diversity but as a powerful bridge that the world must take deliberate care not to let become a monopoly.

Of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken today, UNESCO warns that a large proportion are endangered, with many likely to disappear within this century as their last fluent speakers age. This prospect provokes a powerful instinct to intervene, but the question of how far we should go is harder than the instinct suggests. By "save" I mean not one action but a spectrum — from cheaply recording a language to the costly, sustained work of restoring it to everyday use. This essay argues that we should document every endangered language as a matter of course, but attempt full revival only where the speaker community itself wants and drives it, because effort imposed from outside is both unlikely to succeed and ethically questionable.

The case for trying hard to save dying languages is strong. A language is not merely a set of labels but a unique repository of knowledge, history, humour and ways of perceiving the world; when it dies, that perspective is lost as completely as an extinct species, and often irreversibly. For the communities concerned, language is bound up with identity and dignity, and its loss can feel like a continuation of the historical injustice that frequently caused it, since many indigenous languages were actively suppressed under colonial rule. On this view, helping to preserve a language is a matter of cultural justice as much as of academic interest, and the international community has a real interest in maintaining the diversity of human thought.

Crucially, this effort is not futile, which answers the most common objection. The revival of te reo Māori in New Zealand — driven by community "language nests" for young children, Māori-language broadcasting and official recognition — has increased the number of speakers and learners and restored the language's public status. The revival of Welsh, through bilingual education and dedicated media, tells a similar story in a Western context. These cases prove that decline is not inevitable and that determined, well-resourced effort can reverse it.

Yet there are serious reasons for caution that a mature answer must concede. Full revival is extremely expensive and slow, and resources spent on it are resources not spent on health, education or poverty reduction; for a poorer country, the trade-off is real. A single shared national or global language can also bring genuine economic opportunity and help unite a diverse society, and speakers themselves frequently choose the dominant language for precisely these reasons. Where that is so, an externally driven revival can feel less like liberation than like an imposition by outsiders romanticising a language its own community has chosen to leave behind.

The way to reconcile these positions is to distinguish between documentation and revival. Recording a language — its grammar, vocabulary and oral literature — is comparatively cheap, preserves the knowledge permanently, and should be done universally, since the cost of losing the record entirely is so high. Active revival, by contrast, is justified only where the community itself wants it and is prepared to lead, because, as both the Māori and Welsh cases show, revival succeeds through the will of speakers rather than the enthusiasm of outsiders. This distinction allows us to honour the value of every language without committing limited resources to projects that cannot or should not succeed.

In conclusion, we should try to save dying languages, but the extent of that effort should be calibrated rather than uniform. Every endangered language deserves to be documented, because the knowledge it holds is irreplaceable and the recording is cheap; full revival deserves wholehearted support precisely where the community drives it, as the te reo Māori revival proves is possible. We should not, however, impose revival on communities that have chosen otherwise. The right answer is therefore neither "save them all at any cost" nor "let them go", but document universally and revive by consent.