Welsh speakers have been urged by a former mayor of Aberystwyth to have more children to help secure the future of the language.Sion Jobbins, who has recently become a father for the third time, said politicians need to tackle the subject.
I am all in favour of diversity but I find it a bit OTT to actually tell people to have more children to save a language.
A language is certainly alive as long as there are people prepare to speak it. It is also alive as long as it continues to evolve.
But as everything else it is a natural process, you can only keep it alive artificially for so long.
If Welsh has to survive it will.
I'm not entirely sure I'd like to tell my children I had them for the survival of the language.
nan29
In my dwelling place, where the people are called as "Javanese" people (coz we live on Java island), recently, many old generations are also worried that someday our language--Javanese language- will disappear. However, since Indonesia is still struggling to control the birth control rate, of course it is out of question to have more children to maintain the language
I somewhat agree with you that a language will not easily vanish. However, the worry that this traditional language will disappear one day makes sense to me. I observe that more and more young generations don't know how to speak Javanese language; they choose to speak the national language--Bahasa Indonesia. I myself have parents whose hometown is not from Java island, but from another island in Indonesia. I don't speak Javanese well. Since the blood in me is not really Javanese (though I have lived on Java island since I was born), I don't feel 'guilty' not to 'maintain' the continuation of Javanese language (or we call it as BOSO JOWO here). I speak English much better than Boso Jowo. I speak Bahasa Indonesia to my only daughter.