Losing your tongue (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Public release date: 1-Nov-2009
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-11/uou-lyt102909.php

Contact: Taunya Dressler
t.dressler at ucomm.utah.edu
801-587-9183
University of Utah

Losing your tongue
World's top endangered language experts gather at University of Utah
Nov. 2, 2009 -- Elder Tommy George has not spoken his aboriginal  
language of Kuku Thaypan for three years, since his brother died. "It  
might die in the throat, but it stays alive in the heart," he said to  
the Queensland Courier-Mail in June, 2009.

What happens when you no longer have anyone to talk to in your own  
language?

"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,"  
says Anthony Aristar, professor of linguistics at Eastern Michigan  
University. "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."

Aristar is one of fifty international experts in endangered languages  
who will convene at the University of Utah November 12 to 14 to take  
the first step in a massive undertaking to catalogue endangered and  
dying languages and to make the information accessible through a  
comprehensive online database.

"It's our responsibility as linguists to do what we can," says Lyle  
Campbell, director of the U's Center for American Indian Languages  
(CAIL) and professor of linguistics. "Linguistics is a study of human  
cognition, what makes the mind tick, click, and work. When we lose,  
say, 50 percent of languages, we're losing 50 percent of human  
cognitive ability. It's an unspeakable tragedy."

Campbell and Aristar, working with a grant from the National Science  
Foundation, 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 produce 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 resources to the most critically  
endangered tongues. "While a language is still living, there's always  
hope that it can be saved for posterity," says Aristar. "If we don't  
do this work, there might come a time when all that is left is the  
cultures reflected by the 'big' languages such as English, Spanish,  
Chinese and Arabic."

Language extinction is not new. In the last 500 years, half of the  
world's languages have become extinct. What is new is the accelerated  
rate of language extinction today. Linguists predict that in the next  
100 years nearly 90 percent of the world's 7,000 languages will become  
extinct, with a best case scenario at only 35 to 50 percent surviving  
(Krauss, 1992).

"The wisdom of humanity is coded in language," explains Campbell.  
"Once a language dies, the knowledge dies with it. Take for example  
medicinal plants. A tree bark may prevent cancer, AIDS, etc., but the  
name of the tree (and the associated knowledge) typically is lost when  
the language becomes extinct—a loss to all humanity."

But, as Aristar points out, if linguists have enough left of a  
language, they can reconstruct relationships going back many thousands  
of years, showing how we are all related; and they can put this  
together with genetic and archaeological data, and tell us where our  
ancestors were, where they lived, how they moved from one place to  
another and how they interacted with others. This workshop is a first  
step in securing the information on endangered languages so that the  
reconstruction will be possible.


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For a complete schedule of the conference, visit www.cail.utah.edu.

Sponsored jointly by the University of Utah's Center for American  
Indian Languages and Eastern Michigan University's Institute for  
Language Information and Technology, the workshop is made possible by  
a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Contacts:	 Lyle Campbell, Center for American Indian Languages,  
801-587-0716, 801-587-0720, lyle.campbell at linguistics.utah.edu

Taunya Dressler, University of Utah Public Relations, 801-587-9183, t.dressler at ucomm.utah.edu