We use it all day, every day: with family, friends, at work, and at the store. We think and express our most personal thoughts: our faith, identity, and deepest emotions.
Learn why all of our work with people is about language.
Language is Necessary
We use it all day, every day: with family, friends, at work, and at the store. We think and express our most personal thoughts: our faith, identity, and deepest emotions.
Our values and identity are reflected in our language, both the words we use and the way we use them. Being forced to use languages that are not our own means we must take on other cultures and ways of life, resulting in eroding our own.
Limits on Language
Some languages are only spoken – they have never been written before. Others may be written, but don’t have any significant list of words in their language, much less a full dictionary. Without these, people who speak the language aren’t able to use it in formal ways like education – and their identity and rights as a language community are often not recognized by governments.
Even when a language is written, it may not have books or educational materials. This makes it hard to learn in the language, or to learn at all. When concepts are taught in an unfamiliar language, most of a student’s time is spent trying to understand their teacher, rather than truly learning.
Each language is written differently, and those differences mean half of the world’s languages are not used on computers or phones. This makes it hard to do even simple things like visit websites, type documents, use social media, and more.
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