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Language death, maintenance and revival
• people stop speaking a language and start speaking another – language shift
• If every speaker shifts the language is no longer spoken anywhere – language death
Language death
• Very old – languages replaced by Latin and Greek in the Roman Empire, Arabic in West Asia
• Distinction – slow peaceful change as a language changes into another – Latin – French and Italian – Sanskrit – Hindi and Punjabi – Classical Malay – Modern Malay – is not language death
continued
• Language death – one language is replaced by another
• Death of speakers – Australian Aborigines, Native Tasmanians and Native Caribbeans – mainly by disease
• Most frequently – all speakers shift to other languages – Australia and Americas
Language Suicide
• Gradual replacement by a closely related language
• Decreolisation in the Caribbean
• Maybe Tok Pisin in PNG
Causes of death
• Occasionally by force – boarding school policy for American Indians from 1890s
• Sometimes disease (Tasmania), flood, earthquakes, AIDS in Africa
continued
• More often cultural and economic – migration to cities, intermarriage, education, conversion to scriptural religions
• Economic rewards for language death – social and cultural penalties for speaking old language
continued
• Acceleration with rise of modern empires – French, English, Russian -- and migration
• (note also simultaneous rise of new languages, pidgins and creoles and new varieties – New Englishes)
Today
• 6-10,000 world languages – at least half threatened with extinction
• One century or two – only 1-200 languages left?
• Any language with less than 1 million (100?) speakers is in danger of extinction
• Especially Americas, Africa, Australia
Examples
• California – 98 indigenous languages
• Shift to Spanish before 19th C., then English
• 45 -- no fluent speakers
• 17 – 1-5 speakers in 2001
• 36 spoken by old people
• 0 spoken by children
continued
• World -- at least 400 languages have only elderly speakers
• E.g. Busuu (Cameroon) – 8
• Lipan Apache (US) – 2 or 3
• Wadjigu (Australia) – 1?
• Maybe one died while you were writing
Who are the murderers?
• European languages --English, Spanish, Portuguese
• Regional languages – Hausa, Swahili, Malay
• Other local languages – esp. in Africa
When does a language die?
• Common sense – when the least speaker dies (or penultimate?)
• But Cornish died in 1696 (last monoglot speaker), 1777 (last native speaker), early C19th (last naturalistic learner), 1891 – last student of a native speaker (?) – 1940s Cornish words used for counting fish
Is there a life after death?
• Dead languages may survive as languages of religion – Coptic, some languages of the Roman Empire – prophecies, magic and ceremony -- Manx
• Often provide words for local animals and plants and geography
• E.g. mysterious place names in Britain
continued
• Khoisan languages in southern Africa – words to Zulu and English – gogga (insect) kudu (antelope)
• North American English – moose and squash (Narragansett), raccoon, pecan hickory (Powhatan), skunk (Abenaki)
continued
• Australian English – dingo, koala, wallaby (Dharuk) – also boomerang
• Taino (Caribbean) – maize, cassava, yucca
• Arawak (Caribbean) – cannibal
• Words for counting sheep in N. England – Celtic language dead for 1000 years
Consequences
• 2003 UNESCO paper – language death results in the loss of unique biological and ecological knowledge
• Reduces knowledge about human language and mind
• Death of unique cultures
continued
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – language determines culture e.g. Hopi – lack of a sense of time
• But criticised
• Close relationship of Australian languages
• Contradicted by Chomsky and UG
Distinctive features of languages
• Hawaian – no consonant clusters – only five vowels
• Khoisan – clicks
Loss of local knowledge
• North Frisian – word for pituitary gland indicated awareness that stress damages the gland
• Amazon -- place names indicate where fish can be found
• Africa – Names for plants indicate medicinal properties
Military value?
• US army – codes in Navaho – also Cherokee (WWI) and Zulu
• Redundant now?
Can dying languages be maintained?
• Serious attempts from mid-20th century in US, Australia, Europe
• Subjects in school, media, education
• Success is limited – economic and cultural factors in North America and Australia
continued
• Absence of realistic domain except ceremonial and political
• Requires motivation to overcome economic disadvantages
• At best – will be used in formal situations
continued
• Success requires political support – usually absent with small languages
• Also fairly large population
• Success stories – French in Canada, Welsh, Maori, Hawaian, Catalan, Irish
• Becomes a taught second language
Canada
• Language shift from French to English reversed
• Coercion – signboards – immigrants and minorities required to be taught in French – control of immigration
• Required control of provincial govt.
• Signs that shift is starting again
Ireland
• Shift from Irish to English almost complete by 1920s
• Govt required signs in 2 languages – pass in Irish for govt employment – economic subsidies to Irish speaking areas
• Revival as a taught 2nd language – continued decline as a 1st language
continued
Language death can be prevented or language death reversed if
• Supporters control local or national govt
• Group is distinct for historical or ethnic reasons
• Language is culturally valued
Is revival possible?
• Can a dead language be revived?
• Maybe Hebrew in Israel? – but exceptional
• Religious and cultural value
• Tradition of language shift
• Rejection of spoken languages
• Continued written and formal use
• Maybe modern Hebrew a new language
continued
• Dead languages may be studied as a hobby (Cornish), symbol of group identity (Sanskrit) or for religious reasons (Coptic)
• But no (maybe one) examples of real revival
• Language creation is just as pointless.
Problems
• Some dead languages not written
• Some died before they could be recorded (Cornish)
• Even if recorded may be problems – last speaker of Dalmatian had no teeth (dental fricatives?)
• Which variety? – from what period?
Final observation
• New varieties come into existence – Beduin Sign language – pidgins – new dialects – New Englishes
• In time may become languages – laissez-faire policy for language birth as well as language death?
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