Effects of mother tongue loss on individuals and communities

Abstract

Drawing from the Kenyan experience, this paper seeks to address the situation in which individuals find themselves when they lose their mother tongue, either through language shift, language loss or language death. It thus seeks to respond to the question, “What does one lose when one loses one‟s mother tongue?” People from minority language groups, be they indigenous or migrant, are often at the risk of losing their languages. They quickly establish which languages have prestige, power and preference, and focus their attention to keeping those vibrant in their lives. Also, with some of these languages living only in the minds of their speakers, without orthography or any other form of record, minority languages are at a risk of being lost with every death of an elder and every shift of a youth from speaking them. Attitudes toward language loss run deep and many people who lose their mother tongues tend to suppress their feelings of insecurity born out of loss of self-confidence and self-assertiveness. This insecurity is also compounded by the loss of one's culture. The paper goes further to highlight the effects that language loss has on society.