VANISHING VOICES - myelt.heinle.com
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208 UNIT 9 VANISHING VOICES The Earth’s population of seven billion people speaks roughly 7,000 languages. However, there is a very unequal distribution in the number of people who speak these languages. In fact, just 85 of them are spoken by 78 percent of the world’s population. And the least common 3,500 languages are spoken by fewer than 9 million people combined. For example, there are only 235,000 speakers of Tuvan, the native language of the Republic of Tuva in the Russian Federation. And there are fewer than 2,000 known speakers of Aka, a language from Arunachal Pradesh in northeastern India. Many of these smaller languages are disappearing rapidly. More than 1,000 are listed as critically or severely endangered. In fact, it is estimated that a language “dies” every 14 days. According to linguists, within the next century, nearly half of the world’s current languages will disappear as communities abandon native tongues in favor of English, Mandarin, or Spanish. But should we be concerned about language extinction? And what can we do to prevent it? HOW DO LANGUAGES DIE? Since humans first started to communicate with each other, languages have come and gone. The languages of powerful groups have spread, while the languages of smaller cultures have disappeared. Today, languages dominate not only because they are spoken by powerful groups, but also because of how they are used. For example, languages like English are commonly used on television, on the Internet, and in international business. 2.08 A B C Johnny Hill, Jr. is one of the last speakers of Chemehuevi, an endangered Native American language.
Transcript of VANISHING VOICES - myelt.heinle.com
208 U N I T 9
VANISHING VOICES
The Earth’s population of seven billion people speaks roughly 7,000 languages. However, there is a very unequal distribution in the number of people who speak these languages. In fact, just 85 of them are spoken by 78 percent of the world’s population. And the least common 3,500 languages are spoken by fewer than 9 million people combined. For example, there are only 235,000 speakers of Tuvan, the native language of the Republic of Tuva in the Russian Federation. And there are fewer than 2,000 known speakers of Aka, a language from Arunachal Pradesh in northeastern India.
Many of these smaller languages are disappearing rapidly. More than 1,000 are listed as critically or severely endangered. In fact, it is estimated that a language “dies” every 14 days. According to linguists, within the next century, nearly half of the world’s current languages will disappear as communities abandon native tongues in favor of English, Mandarin, or Spanish. But should we be concerned about language extinction? And what can we do to prevent it?
HOW DO LANGUAGES DIE?
Since humans first started to communicate with each other, languages have come and gone. The languages of powerful groups have spread, while the languages of smaller cultures have disappeared. Today, languages dominate not only because they are spoken by powerful groups, but also because of how they are used. For example, languages like English are commonly used on television, on the Internet, and in international business.
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Johnny Hill, Jr. is one of the last speakers of Chemehuevi, an endangered Native American language.
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In an increasingly globalized age, languages spoken in remote places are no longer protected from dominant world languages. Languages such as Mandarin, English, Russian, Hindi, Spanish, and Arabic reach into tiny communities and compete with smaller languages. When one language dominates, children from nondominant language groups tend to lose their native languages as they grow up, go to school, and get jobs. Sometimes they don’t want to speak the less dominant languages, partly because they think that speaking these languages makes it difficult to succeed. These attitudes, along with the strong desire to fit in, threaten the survival of native languages. Political pressure can also affect the survival of smaller languages. Governments sometimes pass laws that require people to use dominant languages at school, at work, and in the media.
WHY SHOULD WE BE CONCERNED?
Why is the extinction of a language with a small number of speakers a concern? Different languages express unique perspectives on the world. For example, languages can show us how a culture experiences basic concepts such as time, numbers, and colors. The Pirahã, an Amazonian tribe, appear to have no words for numbers. Instead, they get by with quantity words such as few and many. This suggests that numbers may be an invention of culture, and not an idea that humans are born with. The way that people think of colors also depends on their language. For example, the Candoshi language in Peru uses one word to describe shades of green, blue, and purple. However, it has a separate word for dark green.
The loss of a language also means the loss of knowledge, similar to the possibility of losing a future miracle drug1 if a species dies out. For example, the Seri in the Sonoran Desert of Mexico have terms for more than 300 desert plants. By studying their language, scientists learned about a highly nutritious2 food source similar to wheat, called eelgrass. Scientists have also learned a lot about the habitats and behaviors of local animals. There are only 650 to 1,000 Seri speakers left, so by losing the language we might lose important scientific knowledge.
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1 A miracle drug is a treatment for a disease that is surprisingly effective and safe.2 Something that is nutritious is healthy.
W O R L D L A N G U A G E S 209
NorthwestPaci�cPlateau
Oklahoma-Southwest
NorthernSouth America
SouthernSouth America
EasternAfrica
EasternSiberia
SoutheastAsia
WesternMelanesia
EasternMelanesia
NorthernAustralia
Caucasus
Mesoamerica
CentralSouth America
SouthernAfrica
WesternAfrica
CentralSiberia
EasternIndia &
Malaysia
SevereHighMediumLow
Threat level
Living Tongues Institutefor Endangered Languages
Language Hot Spots
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If languages continue to vanish at today’s rapid rate, we may lose knowledge about plants that could someday lead to useful drugs. We may also lose information about the history and skills of many of the world’s cultures. In Micronesia, for example, some sailors can find their way across miles of ocean without using any maps or modern equipment. Sadly, their skills and knowledge are encoded in languages that are at risk of disappearing.
HOW CAN WE SAVE DYING LANGUAGES?
Fortunately, groups around the world are working to bring threatened languages back to life. These groups are giving people more opportunity to use these threatened languages, and are changing the attitudes that caused people to stop using them. One group that is helping to preserve disappearing languages is the Enduring Voices Project. This project works to identify language hot spots—places with languages that are both unique and at risk of disappearing. The Enduring Voices Project has two goals: to accurately document the languages of these places and to record the cultural information they contain.
Projects such as these are very important to the survival of endangered languages. The work of these groups will allow us to pass on a wealth of historical, cultural, and scientific knowledge to future generations. As Enduring Voices team member K. David Harrison says, it would be wrong for us to think that “we have nothing to learn from people who just a generation ago were hunter-gatherers3 … What they know—which we’ve forgotten or never knew—may someday save us.”
3 Hunter-gatherers are people who live by hunting and collecting food rather than by farming.
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The Seri have more than 50 terms for family relationships, such as between two cousins.
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