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This article - and from the sound of it Ostler et al. - seems to
gloss over something quite important. Cornish and Manx are
mentioned, and 'continuity' interestingly deployed as a rhetorical
recourse to a living ethnolinguistic heritage. However both these
languages died out quite some time ago - Cornish in the 17th
century, Manx in the 20th - before undergoing what Leanne Hinton
refers to in <i>The green book of language revitalization in
practice</i> as 'reconstruction'; manually putting back together a
language and reincarnating it through education. This is to
(re)invent a form of linguistic heritage as much as, if not more
than, protecting a historically continuous cultural resource. That
distinction is often elided in both academic and media discussion.<br>
<br>
(Usual academic caveat: my points above are not intended as an
evaluation or judgement on the relative worth of such efforts.)<br>
<br>
Also, the 400 figure for Cornish is optimistic and over-simplistic
to say the least - but that's another story...<br>
<br>
Dave<br>
<br>
--<br>
Dr. Dave Sayers<br>
Honorary Research Fellow<br>
College of Arts & Humanities<br>
and Language Research Centre<br>
Swansea University<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:dave.sayers@cantab.net">dave.sayers@cantab.net</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers/About">http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers/About</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 19:59, Ayaz Ahmed wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:%3CBANLkTikLBeyP6OtboFG_=er2=G4Mep9dHQ@mail.gmail.com%3E"
type="cite">
Language death and spending on revitalization of a dying language
is debated by experts, self-proclaimed experts and people who
speak a language with their arguments and beliefs. Here is a BBC
news article which focus on such discussion..<br>
<h1 class="story-header">Are dying languages worth saving?<br>
</h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">Why
should endangered languages be saved? Delegates at the Trinity
College
Carmarthen conference explain - using nine different languages</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">Language
experts are gathering at a university in the UK to discuss
saving the world's
endangered languages. But is it worth keeping alive dialects
that are sometimes
only spoken by a handful of people, asks Tom de Castella?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">"Language
is the dress of thought," Samuel Johnson once said. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">About
6,000 different languages are spoken around the world. But the
Foundation for
Endangered Languages estimates that between 500 and 1,000 of
those are spoken
by only a handful of people. And every year the world loses
around 25 mother
tongues. That equates to losing 250 languages over a decade -
a sad prospect
for some. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">This week
a conference in Carmarthen, west Wales, organised by the
foundation, is being
attended by about 100 academics. They are discussing
indigenous languages in
Ireland, China, Australia and Spain.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">"Different
languages will have their quirks which tell us something about
being
human," says Nicholas Ostler, the foundation's chairman. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">"And
when languages are lost most of the knowledge that went with
them gets lost.
People do care about identity as they want to be different.
Nowadays we want
access to everything but we don't want to be thought of as no
more than people
on the other side of the world."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">Apart
from English, the United Kingdom has a number of other
languages. Mr Ostler
estimates that half a million people speak Welsh, a few
thousand Scots are
fluent in Gaelic, about 400 people speak Cornish, while the
number of Manx
speakers - the language of the Isle of Man - is perhaps as
small as 100. But is
there any point in learning the really minor languages?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height:
normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times
New Roman","serif";">Last
speaker dies </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">"I
do think it's a good thing for a child on the Isle of Man to
learn Manx. I
value continuity in a community."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">In
Europe, Mr Ostler's view seems to command official support.
There is a European
Charter for Regional Languages, which every European Union
member has signed,
and the EU has a European Language Diversity For All
programme, designed to
protect the most threatened native tongues. At the end of last
year the project
received 2.7m euros to identify those languages most at risk.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">But for
some this is not just a waste of resources but a
misunderstanding of how
language works. The writer and broadcaster Kenan Malik says it
is
"irrational" to try to preserve all the world's languages. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">Earlier
this year, the Bo language died out when an 85-year-old member
of the Bo tribe
in the India-owned Andaman islands died.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">While it
may seem sad that the language expired, says Mr Malik,
cultural change is driving
the process. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">"In
one sense you could call it a cultural loss. But that makes no
sense because
cultural forms are lost all the time. To say every cultural
form should exist
forever is ridiculous." And when governments try to prop
languages up, it
shows a desire to cling to the past rather than move forwards,
he says. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">If people
want to learn minority languages like Manx, that is up to them
- it shouldn't
be backed by government subsidy, he argues.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">"To
have a public policy that a certain culture or language should
be preserved
shows a fundamental misunderstanding. I don't see why it's in
the public good
to preserve Manx or Cornish or any other language for that
matter." In the
end, whether or not a language is viable is very simple. "If a
language is
one that people don't participate in, it's not a language
anymore."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height:
normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times
New Roman","serif";">Wicked
words </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">The
veteran word-watcher and Times columnist Philip Howard agrees
that languages
are in the hands of people, not politicians. "Language is the
only
absolutely true democracy. It's not what professors of
linguistics or academics
or journalists say, but what people do. If children in the
playground start
using 'wicked' to mean terrific then that has a big effect." <span
style=""> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">The
former Spanish dictator Franco spent decades trying to stamp
out the nation's
regional languages but today Catalan is stronger than ever and
Basque is also
popular. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">And Mr
Howard says politicians make a "category mistake" when they
try to
interfere with language, citing an experiment in Glasgow
schools that he says
is doomed to fail. "Offering Gaelic to children of people who
don't speak
it seems like a conservation of lost glories. It's very
romantic to try and
save a language but nonsense."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">But
neither is he saying that everyone should speak English. "Some
people take
a destructivist view and argue that everyone will soon be
speaking English. But
Mandarin is the most populous language in the world and
Spanish the fastest
growing." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">There are
competing forces at work that decide whether smaller languages
survive, Howard
argues. On the one hand globalisation will mean that many
languages disappear.
But some communities will always live apart, separated by sea,
distance or
other barriers and will therefore keep their own language.
With modern
communications and popular culture "you find that if enough
people want to
speak a language they can". </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">In short,
there is no need for handwringing. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";">"Language
is not a plant that rises and falls, lives and decays. It's a
tool that's
perfectly adapted by the people using it. Get on with living
and talking."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height:
115%; font-family: "Times New
Roman","serif";"> </span></p>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11304255">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11304255</a><br
clear="all">
<br>
-- <br>
Ayaz Ahmad<br>
Lecturer in English,<br>
Department of English,<br>
Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan. <br>
Ph.D. Research Scholar,<br>
Area Study Centre (Russia, China & Central Asia),<br>
University of Peshawar.<br>
Cell Phone: +92-334-8432207<br>
</blockquote>
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