Vanishing languages

Red Thundercloud, a member of the Native American group called the Catawba, was an herbalist,' singer, storyteller, and historian. However, he was unable to share his knowledge, songs, stories, and histories with anyone in his native language. «The last person to speak the language before me», he recalled at one time, «was our Chief Sam Blue. He died in 1959, and now his grandson Gilbert is our chief, and he does not speak it». When the historian and storyteller died in 1996, he was the last person who could speak the Catawba language. Unfortunately, Red Thundercloud's situation is all too common today.

Language is the keystone of culture. A common language serves to bind the people in a society together, and a language reflects the history and dreams of its speakers. A Welsh proverb says that «A nation without a language is a nation without a heart». Yet many of the languages spoken today are disappearing. The world is in danger of losing much of its linguistic diversity. A small number of languages predominate; almost 50% of the people of the world speak one of only six languages: Mandarin Chinese, English, Hindustani, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic. About 95% of the world's languages are spoken by only 5% of the world's population.

It is estimated that there are between 6,000 and 7,000 languages spoken in the world today. The Ethnologue,a publication of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, lists 6,800 distinct languages, but some of those are considered dialects by most linguists. A more conservative, commonly used estimate is around 6,000. According to UNESCO, half of today's languages have fewer than 10,000 speakers, and a quarter have fewer than 1,000. UNESCO classifies languages as follows: When the number of people speaking a language is actively growing, it is considered healthy. When children are no longer taught a language, it is considered endangered. When a language is spoken by only a handful of elderly people, it is considered moribund. When no one at all speaks a language as a first language, it is considered extinct. Some 40 to 60% of the world's tongues are considered endangered or moribund. And the process of language destruction is accelerating. Michael Krauss, director of the Alaska Native Language Center, believes that by 2100, 90% of the languages spoken today may be extinct. «If people become wise and turn it around», says Krauss, «that number could be reduced to 50%». This is about the best-case scenario.

Language disappearance is a worldwide concern. Of the 300 to 400 languages once spoken by Native Americans and Native Canadians, only about 150 are in existence today, and only about 30 are considered healthy. The situation is similar in Australia: of the 250 aboriginal languages once spoken there, only 20 are healthy, 160 are extinct, and the rest are endangered or moribund. An entire language group, the Marie family in Queensland, Australia, which consists of 12 languages, is in danger. Only one of these languages, Bidyara, has as many as twenty speakers, and they are all elderly. Most have fewer than five. In 1997, Time International spotlighted a number of languages in peril, including the Lappish languages in Scandinavia, various Romani (Gypsy) tongues, and the Ainu language of Hokkaido Island, Japan. Around the globe, there are hundreds more. Within recent times, the complete extinction of a number of languages has been chronicled. The Manx language, once spoken on the Isle of Man, passed away when Ned Maddrell died in 1974. In western Australia, Jack Butler, the last native speaker of Jiwarii, died in 1986, according to Peter K. Austin of the University of Melbourne. As mentioned in the first paragraph, Red Thundercloud, the last speaker of Catawba, died in South Carolina in 1996. Speaking of the extinction of language, George Broadwell, linguist from SUNY at Albany, wrote, «It can be a very sad thing. Often, the last speakers can feel isolated. They have no one to speak to in their native tongue and they know that the stories and the oral history they tell in their native tongue will die with them». Steven Bird, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania, tried to make sense of the situation for English-speakers: «Imagine you are the last surviving speaker of English in a hostile world that has no interest in English. That's what it must feel like».

The process of language extinction is natural, of course. Languages have always evolved into other languages. For example, Latin turned into Italian, and Anglo-Saxon into English. Languages may disappear for many reasons: natural disasters, wars, and diseases. In the 1960s, a group of Western explorers exposed a village in Venezuela to influenza. Having no 6s immunity to the disease, almost the entire village died. That village was the only place where the Trumai language was spoken. In some cases, governments have pressured minority groups to abandon their native languages. English speakers, at various times, suppressed the Celtic languages such as Welsh and Irish in the British Isles. Centuries before in Britain, the Norman French had suppressed the English. In the United States, Canada, and Australia, young speakers of native languages were once forced to attend boarding schools where the use of their mother tongues was prohibited. The same was true in the Soviet Union in the 1950s; young speakers of minority languages were sent to camps called Internatsand forced to speak only Russian. Mass media, such as movies and television, are often blamed for destroying languages, but according to African language specialist Russell Schuh of UCLA, the biggest threats are actually improved transportation and economic pressure. Young adults move to cities and, to compete for jobs, must learn majority languages, so they then do not teach their children their native tongues. English has a reputation as a «killer language», but it is more often regional business languages that replace tribal languages, according to linguist Douglas Whalen. And governments encourage people to learn a unifying language. For example, in Tanzania, people are encouraged to speak Swahili rather than local languages such as Sandawe and Hadza.

Some people are fighting to retain traditional languages. In the Cameroon, where over 250 languages are spoken, Maurice Tadadjeu, a professor at the University of Yaounde, has pioneered a program to teach tribal languages in elementary schools. Using funds from their casinos, the. Winnebago tribe of Wisconsin, U.S.A., has developed an interactive computer program to teach their language, Hocak. New Zealand's original people, the Maori, have set up Kohanga Reo, or language nests. Taught mostly by elderly native speakers, young children are immersed in the language in the warm atmosphere of these nests, and the Maori language has rebounded as a result. Also, some extinct languages have been resurrected. The Celtic language Cornish died out in 1777. However, by using written documents, several thousands of people in Cornwall, U.K., have studied the language and taught it to their children. Nonetheless, despite these and other successes, the process can’t be wholly reversed. «We'll continue to lose languages», Douglas Whalen says. «There’s inevitability about it».

Why should the world care if languages fade away? Not everyone does. Journalist John Miller commented in The Wall Street Journalthat the trend «is arguably worth celebrating [because] age-old obstacles to communication are collapsing». Most people, though, see the disappearance of a languageas a loss of precious diversity. Languages are among humankind's most complex creations, and «each language slices the pie of reality differently», as linguist Mario Pei explained. Each has unique features. For instance, the endangered African language Dschang distinguishes among ten verb tenses by the slightest shifts of intonation. And more than grammar and vocabulary is lost when a language dies. There is a loss of poetry, oral traditions, humor, and knowledge accumulated over centuries. Sadly, only about half of the world's endangered languages have adequate writing systems. Language expert David Crystal summed up the problem this way: «When a language which has never been written down dies, it is as if it has never been».

Дата добавления: 2014-12-27