How does language include/exclude; represent/misrepresent?

In class we watched a video called Fry’s Planet World. I learnt that your accent can give other people an insight to who you are and that you can make an assumption about someone just by hearing their voice. Some people can sound more powerful because their accent is stronger and possibly louder. Your accent can be shaped by where you were raised, and can also change depending on who you are talking to.

Occitane, a language from the south of France is becoming endangered. The French government want to remove all languages in France other than French. By doing this the are excluding all the people who speak Occitane (and other smaller languages) from the community. At the same time they are uniting (which is inclusive) the country of France by making everyone speak the same language (French). The people who speak Occitane do not want their language to die out because they believe that their language is linked to the identity of their culture. There is a group of people who decide what worlds will/can be used in the French language.

The Hebrew language was revived after WW2 and the Holocaust. There were a group of government people who went through all the words in the bible and decided what ones would be used in the Hebrew language. They also went through and added new words for the more modern items/things. Many words in the Hebrew language are from English because many of the modern items were not in the bible, therefore they don’t have a word in the Hebrew language.

“Our attachment to our language is about emotion.” This is a quote that was at the end of the video that we watched. I think that this quote is saying that even if a language dies out, it will still be in the hearts of many people and they will still feel like it will always be a part of who they are.