Desi Anwar: Losing a Language (fwd)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

April 30, 2010

Desi Anwar: Losing a Language
India

According to an article in The New York Times, New York City is home to as
many as 800 languages, many of them in danger of disappearing. This makes it
a laboratory of world languages in decline. As official national languages
tend to domi n ate because they are a country’s main tongue and English
creeps into even the most remote corners of the world, many local languages
are fast dying out.

New York, on the other hand, finds itself a Tower of Babel for all sorts of
exotic languages and dialects brought in by immigrants who keep their
languages alive, at least while there are enough people around who remember
how to speak them.

Bukhari, a Persian language spoken by the Bukharian Jews of Central Asia,
has more speakers in Queens than in Uzbekistan, the article said. Daniel
Kaufman, a professor of linguistics at the City University of New York has
addressed the problem by starting the Endangered Language Alliance to
research the city’s exotic tongues. Kaufman found, for example, Husni
Husain, 67, who speaks Mamuju, a language of West Sulawesi, which he learned
as a child.

Access full article below:
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/desi-anwar-losing-a-language/372369
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