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INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS

RESEARCH PAPER

TOPIC: ENDANGERED LANGUAGES IN THE WORLD

Many linguists would give us different definitions of

language, however all can agree that languages in the world today

are facing a serious threat in becoming more endangered. Endangered

languages are languages that are likely to become extinct in the

near future. To say a language is endangered is one that is at risk

to become extinct in the immediate future. A language is declared

dead when the very last speaker of the native language dies. In

other words, a dead language is no longer spoken in the form in

which we find it in ancient writings, we are not able to learn it

as a native language. Some dead languages can experience evolution

throughout the years, for instance Ancient Greek was slowly evolved

into modern Greek, and Latin into modern Italian. Some examples of

other dead languages include Coptic, Sanskirt, and some other huge

numbers of Native American languages which died out with European

colonialism. The famous American linguist Michael E. Krauss held

that languages are "moribund" if the younger population no longer

speaks a language.

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In February 2010, the death of the last speaker of an early

language in India’s Andaman Islands highlighted the fact that as

many as half of the world’s nearly 7000 languages are in the state

to become extinct within the next century. In other words, by 2100,

more than 50% of the 7000 languages spoken on earth - many of them

not yet recorded - may disappear. To post the severity of this

situation in a more obvious way, National Geographic concluded that

languages are now falling out of use at a rate of about one every

two weeks. In fact, languages are currently even more endangered

than plant and animal species. At least 20% of the world's

languages are in impending danger of becoming vanished as their

last speakers die off, compared with about 18% of mammals, 8% of

plants and 5% of birds.

According to UNESCO, the United States is second only to India

in having the highest number of endangered languages. Even in

countries where the linguistic diversity is not as large, many

languages are endangered. The National Geographic’s Enduring Voices

Project is one of the many projects that helps in the effort of

revitalizing threatened languages. Its goal is to document and

preserve endangered languages by identifying the most critical

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areas where languages are endangered. In 2010, Enduring Voice

Project had identified five “language hotspots” where languages are

most endangered, which are the central Siberia, eastern Siberia,

northwest pacific plateau, northern Australia and central South

America. The head of the Enduring Voices Project, who is a

linguistics professor, K. David Harrison explained in his book The

Last Speakers: The Quest to Save the World’s Most Endangered Languages that a

language hotspot refers to a region with a very high level of

language diversity and at the same time has high levels of language

endangerment, furthermore with a relatively low levels of

scientific documentation.

From the five “language hotspots”, here is a more detailed

facts about each region. In northern Australia, it was surveyed

that over 90% of the native languages of the aboriginal peoples

will die with the current generation. In the Northwest Pacific

Plateau region, they found no children and few to no young adults

speak the indigenous languages in the American portion of the

region. In the urban centers of British Columbia, many are

abandoning their native languages for English.

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Central South America is believed to be the world's most

endangered, with high language diversity, few documentation of

remaining indigenous languages, and immediate threats to their

continued use. Here, Spanish, Portuguese (in Brazil), and more

dominant indigenous languages are rising up to replace smaller

ones. Next is central Siberia. This hotspot claims few indigenous

languages compared with most. However, it holds six language

families, two of which have only one remaining language, and almost

all of the languages here are endangered. Over the last few

generations, a number of Siberian languages have been extinguished

by the Russian-only government policies. Many living languages here

have only a few elderly speakers, one of them is Tofa which now has

less than 30 speakers. Similar to Central Siberia, the Eastern

Siberia hotspot covers few languages compared to most others.

Nonetheless, there are ten language families in this region,

including at least three families that have only one language each.

For the last few generations, many Siberian languages have been

lost due to government policies that force speakers of minority

languages to give up their own language and use the national

language. Many living languages in the area have only a few elderly

speakers.

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Once we have determined what an endangered language is and

have realized the peril of language endangerment, we must also

understand and interrogate how a language becomes endangered or

even extinct. Linguists and historians have researched on this

matter throughout the years and have concluded that language

extinction can be sudden or gradual.

Language endangerment may be the result of external forces such

as genocide, economic, religious, cultural, or educational

subjugation, or it may be caused by internal forces, such as a

community’s negative attitude towards its own language.

Outright genocide is definitely extreme and language

extinction happens almost instantly due to the physical loss of

speakers. An example would be the Armenian genocide that was

carried out by the "Young Turk" government of the Ottoman Empire in

1915-1916 where one and a half million Armenians were killed, out

of a total of two and a half million Armenians in the Ottoman

Empire. The member of the Armenian delegation said that this

genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire was the reason that put

the language on the verge of disappearance (Postanjyan, 2010).

Besides that, educational subjugation is also one cause of language

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extinction that had been prevalent. Forced abandonment of the

language happens through overt suppression and is usually

accompanied by the institution of dominant-language schools. For

example, in a conference presentation in the University of Utah in

2009, the speaker told about in the late 1800s and early 1900s

where Native American groups across the United States were forced

to abandon their native languages for English. Indian children who

attended boarding schools were required by the government to speak

only English. Otherwise, corporal punishment will be carried out

for those who speak anything other than English. This had

predictably led many of the boarding school students, to develop

negative attitudes toward their own native languages.

Furthermore, many have thought that it is economically

advantageous to learn the majority language and to teach it to

their children. Parents especially would fall into the trend of

believing that acquiring fluency in Arabic or English or Spanish

will help their children to find jobs and be successful. Children

also have a role in this process, and often it is the children who

make the choice to stop learning their ancestral language and use

the dominant language exclusively. Because of this, many feel that

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they must stop using their own native language and put their focus

on learning these economically more valuable languages.

Negative opinions and low prestige are also a major underlying

cause of language endangerment. In the previous examples, it was

seen that many have developed negative thoughts and insecure

feelings toward their own native language due to some external

forces. In a constitutional response to language endangerment by

Collette Craig in 1992, Craig discussed how Moravian missionaries

pushed the Rama people of Nicaragua to switch from the Rama

language to English. The speakers of Nicaragua believed that “Rama

was ‘no language’ and was ‘ugly’, and were ashamed of speaking it.”

Linguists have expressed that it was difficult in gaining support

for revitalization with the speakers here when they contain these

negative feelings about the language. Besides that, languages

become extinct when a community finds itself under pressure to

assimilate with a larger or more dominant group. In addition to

their own language, the people in the group would learn the

outsiders’ language and eventually they would give up their own

language and even their ethnic and cultural identity. This has

happened in Greenland, a territory of Denmark where Kalaallisut is

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learned alongside with Denmark and in the end its language has been

replaced with Kalaallisut as it slowly disappears.

Many indigenous peoples, associating their disadvantaged

social position with their culture, have come to believe that their

languages are not worth retaining. They abandon their languages and

cultures in hopes of overcoming discrimination, to secure a

livelihood, and enhance social mobility, or to conform to the

global marketplace. This has no doubt accelerated the rate of

language disappearance in the recent years.

One might wonder: What does language extinction mean for a

community and the rest of us? Why does it matter if a language

dies? If there are over 7,000 languages, why does it matter if one

disappears?

"A language is not just words and grammar; it is a web of history that binds all the

people who once spoke the language, all the things they did together, all the

knowledge they imparted to their descendants. When a language dies, it's just the

same as when a species dies. You lose a part of the network of life, and you lose

everything it could impart."

Anthony Aristar, professor of linguistics at Eastern

Michigan University.

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When a language dies, something very valuable is lost too.

Language is closely tied with identity. The languages we speak

define who we are in a major way. For each of us, our native

language also binds us to others and creates a community of

speakers.

Language is more than just a complex of sounds and structures

and word-meanings. It is also the bearer of a culture, an

incredible load of human knowledge and experience and

understanding. Much of the cultural, spiritual and intellectual

life of a people is experienced through language. This ranges from

epics, myths, nursery rhymes, prayers, proverbs, parables, ritual

formulae, jokes, love-songs, all of this that celebrates and

interprets our existence. Not only the loss of languages would

diminish the study of linguistics, but this phenomenon would also

affect the study of history, anthropology, geography, and other

fields of science. How so? A people’s history is passed down

through its language, so when the language disappears, it may take

with it important information about the early history of the

community. Researchers from disciplines, such as biology, medicine,

and environmental science, also can benefit immensely from speakers

of endangered languages, who often have detailed knowledge of local

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flora and fauna that may be unknown to modern scientists. The loss

of language would limit linguists, historians and scientists to

learn about their respective field of knowledge. Ancient languages

contain knowledge and information that are so rich and helpful to

humans today, through these languages we know how ancient people

calculated accurately the passing of seasons without clocks or

calendars, and how humans adapted to hostile environments, from the

Arctic to Amazonia. Scientific knowledge such as the Bolivian

medicinal plants, the 99 distinct sea ice formations in Alaska and

how the Tofa of Siberia classify reindeer, all these can only be

revealed by understanding their languages. When a language dies,

all of this dies with it. Think about that, then multiply it by the

literally thousands of languages now at risk. Louise Erdrich, an

American author noted the crucial importance of the spoken language

to any community: "We never question the importance of keeping an

artifact, of keeping something special that tells us about people

who lived long ago, right? We have museums that we devote millions

of dollars to keeping these artifacts. But how much more

extraordinary is it to have a living language that tells us about

people, since before we have a history of these people. It's all in

the language."

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With every loss of a language, the scope of our ability to

learn about our world, shrinks. Endangered languages can be great

sources of information, if only we can reach them before the last

speakers die.

Efforts To Revive Endangered Languages - expeditions, projects,

documentation

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The extinction of language is not something new, what is new

is the increasing rate of language disappearance that is happening

today. Realizing this, many efforts have been put together in the

hope to revive and preserve endangered languages. When a language

is dying or endangered, or even sometimes when it is an extinct

language, efforts can be made to revive it. Languages may disappear

but not necessarily dead.

The Israeli experience of reviving Hebrew has proved to be a

helpful example. It is the most successful rescue of a near extinct

language thanks to the state of Israel who purposefully created

Hebrew as a national language. How was it possible to revive an

ancient tongue to become a modern spoken language? It is undeniable

that tremendous determination is required. The Zionists in the

early 20th century would only converse in Hebrew, even though they

still found it necessary to converse in Russian or Yiddish about

crucial issues. Scholarly efforts were also put in with production

of modern Hebrew dictionary and the schooling of the young

exclusively in the language. Besides that, a man by the name of

Eliezer Yehuda, contributed in this success by devoting himself to

adapting Hebrew for modern everyday use, he would speak to both his

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mother and wife in Hebrew, even though neither of them understood

the language.

There are many different methods and measures that can be done

in order to protect and preserve endangered languages. Linguists

have worked with communities around the world that want to preserve

their languages, offering both technical and practical help with

language teaching, maintenance, and revival. For the past decade,

many linguists have either corporately or personally raised funds

to help in the research and documenting of endangered languages.

Douglas Whalen of Yale University and a few other linguists

have founded the Endangered Languages Fund. A similar foundation,

The Volkswagen Foundation, a German charity, had created a

multimedia archive at the Max Planck Institute for

Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands to house recordings, grammars,

dictionaries and other data on endangered languages. The foundation

has dispatched fiend linguists to document Aweti (a language with

around 100 speakers in Brazil), Ega(300 speakers in Ivory Coast),

Waima’a(a few hundred speakers in East Timor) and some other

languages unlikely to survive the century. Not only that, a new

British philanthropy called the Lisbet Rausing Charitable Fund had

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managed to collect $30 million and decided to set it aside for a

massive documentation project. The advisor to the foundation

explained that the money is rationed out over the course of eight

to ten years. Some amount of it had been given to the School of

Oriental and African Studies in London to train linguists

especially on field documentation of dying languages, but most of

the fund had been allocated to fieldwork itself. The hope was to

document about 100 endangered languages (Gibbs 2002).

Lyle Campbell and Anthony Aristar, both are professors of

linguistics working with a grant from the National Science

Foundation. They have organized the Endangered Languages

Information and Infrastructure workshop, a first-ever gathering of

the world's top minds in endangered language preservation. The

workshop is the first step in a larger project to harvest an

authoritative, comprehensive online catalogue, database and

updatable website of information on endangered languages. This

database will be used to direct funding to languages and cultures

which are most seriously in danger. The gathering will aid funding

agencies such as the National Science Foundation in directing their

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resources to the most critically endangered tongues (University of

Utah 2009).

Some other personal effort like the Ojibwe Vocabulary Project

was started by a group of Ojibwe elders in 2009. The Ojibwe

language was noted in the 1992 edition of the “Guinness Book Of

World Records” as "languages most complex" for having more than

4,000 verb forms. Ojibwe is spoken by about 10,000 people in more

than 200 communities across the Great Lakes region in the United

States, but 80 percent of them are older than 60.This project is

engaged in creating a growing dictionary and there are on-the-

ground efforts to encourage inter-generational conversations. There

is also the National Endowment for the Humanities, which called

language "the DNA of a culture". It sponsors language preservation

programs and much of today's field work — like that of the Ojibwe

Vocabulary Project — is directed at not just preserving languages,

but reviving them (Moyers 2010).

In May 2010, the PhysOrg, a web-based news service reported a

PhD graduate from Victoria University New Zealand, named Laura

Dimock who spent nine months on an island in Vanuatu documenting

the Nahavaq language, a previously undocumented language in danger

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of extinction. Nahavaq is spoken by about 700 people in South West

Bay, on the Island of Malakula. With no road access to that part of

the island, no mains electricity, limited phone coverage and

several tsunamis warnings, Dr Dimock managed to “live to tell the

tale”. She spent nine months on the island recording Nahavaq speech

and translating it. In the beginning, she picked up Bislama which

is the national pidgin language, and went to interview various

Nahavaq speakers in Bislama to study how they say things, and

slowly figured out a lot of patterns and systems within the

language. During her time in Malakula, she helped to create a new

spelling system and teach it to some of the speakers, which has

begun to be used in local kindergartens. She also worked on story

books, dictionaries and DVDs for the local people in their

language, transcribing and editing where necessary.

The New York Times reported in April 2010 of a joint project

between Stony Brook University and two Indian nations with the

purpose of reviving the language Shinnecock or Unkechaug that

belongs to the Long Island’s Indian tribes. This language had not

been spoken for nearly 200 years. Their goal was language

restoration and enlisting tribal members from this generation and

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the next to speak to them. The chances for success may seem small

given the relatively small number of potential speakers and the

difficulty in persuading a new generation to participate, however

it was reported that there had been progress since then. For the

American Indians on Long Island the task is especially challenging

because there are few records. “But Shinnecock and Unkechaug are

part of a family of eastern Algonquian languages where some have

both dictionaries and native speakers” said Mr. Hoberman, the

chairman of the linguistics department of Stony Brook.

One of the largest movements for preserving endangered

language would be the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered

Languages (LTIEL). Their mission is “to promote the documentation,

maintenance, preservation, and revitalization of endangered

languages worldwide through linguist-aided, community-driven multi-

media language documentation projects.” They are constantly

organizing projects with expedition to communities to dialogue with

last speakers of endangered languages worldwide. The Enduring

Voices Project represents collaboration between National Geographic

Mission Programs and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered

Languages. It strives to preserve endangered languages by

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identifying language hotspots and documenting the languages and

cultures within them. Many expeditions have been carried out

worldwide under the guidance and leadership of the K David

Harrison, the founder of LTIEL together with institute director

Gregory D.S. Anderson. Anderson said the key to getting a language

revitalized is to support a new generation of native speakers. He

said the institute worked with local communities and tries to help

by developing teaching materials and by recording the endangered

language. By using appropriate written materials, video, still

photography, audio recorders, and computers with customized

language software, as well as Internet-accessible archiving where

possible, the Enduring Voices Project is helping empower

communities to preserve ancient traditions with modern technology.

Apart from that, Harrison and the LTIEL, along with alumnus

Matthew Thomas and his iPhone applications company BoCoSoft Inc.,

launched the first talking dictionary for Tuvan — an endangered

language — as an iPhone application named the Tuvan Talking

Dictionary in March 2010. Harrison pointed out that this

application would be the first of many other more series that he

hopes to launch. He and his students are on the making to produce

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talking dictionaries and eventually iPhone applications for other

endangered languages, namely Chamacoco, Sora, Ho and Aka. Harrison

believed that this application would be effective considering the

high production sales of iPhones. Amazingly, the Tuvan Talking

Dictionary application is now available to over 40 million devices

world-wide, and this simply shows how one application can make a

difference. Harrison was confident that his ultimate goal of having

his model serves as an example that other can follow in studying

and revitalizing endangered languages will bring about a massive

revitalization in many other endangered languages in the future. He

added that he would like to set up a database of endangered

languages on the Internet and to bring them into the bigger

companies like Wikipedia. Harrison said that having the languages

available on the Internet or iPhones as talking dictionaries gives

these languages a chance to survive.

In conclusion, the determination for protecting and reviving

endangered languages should be continued on so that language

diversity in the world can be increased. Priority and support

should be given to every work and project out there that is in the

mission to preserve and revive endangered languages.

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Take away language, what is left? Language is what makes us

human, indirectly and directly. If we do not understand what

language is, we do not understand ourselves.

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