What do we know about Endangered Languages?

Language endangerment is a serious concern to which linguists have turned their attention in the last several decades. Nowadays there are about 6,800 distinct languages (and many more dialects) in the world, according to Ethnologue /etnolog/, a database maintained by the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Dallas. Already over 400 languages are close to extinction, with only a few elderly speakers left. More than 3000 languages are also endangered, meaning that children no longer learn these languages and only adults speak them. They seem to have very little chance of survival.

For a variety of reasons, speakers of many smaller, less dominant languages stop using their heritage language and begin using another. In recent centuries, colonisation, trade, industrialisation, and the spread of universal compulsory education, among other things, have helped to extirpate (??????????) many languages that had previously prospered (??????????) in isolation. And in the past few decades, thanks to globalisation and better communications, the rate of endangerment has greatly accelerated, and dominant languages such as English, Spanish and Chinese are increasingly taking over.

While it is well known what causes languages to disappear, very few linguists speak about what happens on the way of their disappearance: vocabularies, grammars and expressive potential all diminish as one language is replaced by another. For example, according to Nick Evans, a leading authority on Aboriginal languages, if a community moves from speaking a traditional Aboriginal language to speaking a creole, all the fine vocabulary that is suitable for the landscape of the region is left behind. No other language can describe the surroundings better than the mother language of that community. Fortunately, Australian linguists have already done a great job to preserve their traditional languages. The 130 remaining Australian languages are very well documented now.

Another Australian who contributed a lot to the process of preserving endangered languages is Peter Austin, a linguist of the University of London. He heads a special programme that has trained a lot of documentary linguists in England and in language-loss hot spots, such as West Africa and South America. Interestingly enough, it was noticed that temperate zones of our planet have relatively few languages, often spoken by many people, whereas hot, wet zones have plenty of languages, often spoken by small communities. For example, Europe has only around 200 languages; the Americas about 1,000; Africa 2,400; and Asia and the Pacific perhaps 3,200, of which Papua New Guinea [ˌpæpjuə njuː'gɪnɪ] alone accounts for well over 800.

In the USA the issue of endangered languages has become something of a flavour of the month. While some linguists keep boasting of more sophisticated means of capturing languages (like digital recording and storing, for example), it is becoming obvious that there are very few really useful methods that could help solve the problem. In addition, Michael Krauss, the most untiring linguist of the University of Alaska, has often noted that linguists are focused on non-essentials, forgetting that most of their raw data is disappearing.

To sum up I can say that linguists have identified the most important things that can be done to keep a language from disappearing. First of all, favourable conditions for its speakers should be created so that they could peak the language and teach it to their children. This often requires national policies that recognize and protect minority languages. Then, some education systems can promote mother-tongue instruction, and creative collaboration between community members and linguists. And finally, it is essential to create a social and political environment that encourages multilingualism and respect for minority languages so that speaking such a language is an asset rather than a liability[ˌlaɪə'bɪlətɪ] (???????????).

Some languages now have so few speakers that they cannot be maintained, but linguists can, if the community wishes, record as much of the language as possible so that it does not disappear without a trace.

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 73