Prospects and Summary

The future of Choctaw is uncertain.  While there have been valiant efforts to teach the language to younger generations, these are still quite limited in their scope.  If access to language courses in schools was expanded and more social media groups were established to allow for practicing and using the language with fellow community members, Choctaw's future would be much brighter.  As it stands, however, the language is in danger from the triple threat of English, the results of systemic racism, and the COVID-19 pandemic.  If these factors are allowed to prevail, Choctaw's future may be very grim indeed.

It is important to preserve endangered languages like Choctaw because, as Dr. David Harrison states, losing languages means losing scientific and cultural knowledge, as well as depriving us of the opportunity to expand our understanding of the human mind (Harrison 15-19).  Myths, stories, poems, and traditions are often passed down through oral tradition, and are thus lost once people stop speaking their native tongue.  Knowledge about the natural world may be encoded in the language itself, making it difficult to translate accurately into another language.  Finally, "everybody speaks differently and has different things to say" -- that is, every language is unique and has its own particular way of communicating various concepts (Harrison 18).  Language death robs us of the opportunity to expand our knowledge of what the human mind is capable of imagining and understanding.

Choctaw is special in the scientific and linguistic knowledge coded within it.  One can see from the words relating to water that the system of using oka as a kind of base to add on other adjectives, nouns, and phrases to in order to alter its meaning is linguistically interesting and unique.  The word oktushshi alone provides insight into the natural world by allowing Choctaw speakers to describe a concept that many English speakers may be unfamiliar with or would lack a way to effectively communicate.  This scientific and linguistic knowledge shows why Choctaw and other endangered languages are worth saving.  Without it, our understanding of the world and of our minds is incomplete.