Globalization is not a new term and is generally viewed as an important issue today. One of the reasons is that globalization has many negative effects on human languages. People believe that globalization makes language loss occur rapidly. Skeptics of globalization say that it weakens and even destroys minor languages because in order to become more competitive so many people study common languages but not their native languages. Supporters of globalization say that it will not lead to languages loss because globalization has impact on languages but influence is limited after all. This essay will argue that globalization is contributing to language loss, because colonization caused indigenous language loss, economic development needs a common language as well as English has become dominant in many fields.
First of all, colonization and migration have affected the local and native languages in many countries around the world. For historical reasons, there are many colonies around the world. People in these countries or areas speak a colonial language which is from a more powerful and distant country. For example, Spanish is the official language in Argentina. People speak Portuguese in Brazil and Macao. Colonizers set societies in which local languages are abandoned but colonial languages are used (Cameron 2002). As the example of Papua New Guinea, after the invasion of European colonists, the usage of people’s language shifted from local languages to a dominant language Tok Pisin, which is created by the demand and communication between indigenous people and white men (Eckert et al. n.d.). Unfortunately, like colonization, there is a trend that migration is becoming more universal in the modern society. Actually it has an inevitable effect on languages. Globalization enables people to move overseas easily. For instance, people can work in another country or study overseas. These activities force the voluntary migration which can make some minor languages...