Kitt Language Analysis

Kitt is the school translator. She can speak 18 languages and write 10 of those 18. On a particularly busy day, Kitt translates for as many as 6 people. On one of these days at work, Kitt receives a call from her boss asking her to meet a few new foreign students at the high school and assist them with enrollment. When she arrives, Kitt finds eight families waiting to enroll their students. She is astonished to find three families speak Spanish, two speak Arabic, two speak German, and one speaks Chinese. Kit easily translates for the two Hispanic families, and she manages to barely translate for the Arabian family, but she does not know German or Chinese. Four hours have already passed since Kitt first arrived, and there are still three families

Say a preacher is working on a sermon, and he is researching a particular verse and studying the meanings behind the words used. He is confused about the word suffering in a particular verse, so he looks back at the original language the bible was written in, Hebrew. In Hebrew, the word used is nacah. This word means to bear a great pain or sorrow, or furnish a harbor for pain. With this context, a pastor can better interpret the Bible for the people he is speaking to.

So which is better, having only one world language to simplify communication, or maintaining a linguistic diversity for uses like interpretation of scripture? In John McWhorter’s writing “The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The University of English,” he poses the question of whether “the benefits of linguistic diversity are more important...than the impediment to communication that they entail" (434). After comparing the benefits of linguistic diversity to the impediments, the benefits seem to balance out the impediments. So, the world should maintain linguistic diversity while having one official

The dying out of languages is unfortunate, but it can be prevented, and there are many reasons it should be prevented. While many people may never hear of languages from remote parts of the world, every language carries a certain amount of significance within it. For example, Greek hold clues about the first and truest translation of the Bible. Trying to learn every language would be like trying to fit a full grown elephant into a Volkswagen Beetle; it just ain’t gonna happen. So instead of learning a headache of languages, the best solutions would be to have a single official language to improve world communications. At the end of the day, languages change, and some dominate over others, but it will ultimately be the public’s choice on whether historically significant languages survive the test time, or whether they will fall into the shadows and be forgotten. The life, and death, of languages is in the hands of the people. They will decide how the cookie will