<div dir="ltr"><h2 itemprop="name">PNG languages at risk</h2>
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Originally aired on
<a href="http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/programmes/datelinepacific/20150306">Dateline Pacific, Friday 6 March 2015</a>
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<p>Papua New Guinea is highly regarded for its diversity of
languages, but one of the country's foremost linguists says about half
of the country's 800 languages are at risk of becoming extinct in the
near future.</p>
<div class=""><ul><li class=""><a class="" href="http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/programmes/datelinepacific/audio/20169902/png-languages-at-risk">Play</a></li><li><span class=""><span class="">Download:</span> <a class="" href="http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/pacn/dateline-20150306-1602-png_languages_at_risk-00.ogg" title="Download ogg : size = 1.09 MB">Ogg</a> | <a class="" href="http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/pacn/dateline-20150306-1602-png_languages_at_risk-048.mp3" title="Download mp3 : size = 1.35 MB">MP3</a></span></li><li class=""><span class="">Audio duration: </span>( 3′ 35″ )</li></ul><br></div>
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<h3>Transcript</h3>
<p><strong>Papua New Guinea is highly regarded for its diversity
of languages, but one of the country's foremost linguists says about
half of the country's 800 languages are at risk of becoming extinct in
the near future.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Dr Sakarepe Kamene, who is the head of languages at the
University of PNG and one of the country's longest-serving academics,
says the government is not placing enough value and priority into
protecting the languages.</strong></p>
<p><strong>He told Jamie Tahana he fears nothing will be done until it's too late.</strong></p>
<p>SAKAREPE KAMENE: Because the problem is that we haven't got a
language policy or strong cultural policies to really take care of what
we have got as a heritage. And that is an issue now at the moment.</p>
<p>JAMIE TAHANA: How threatened would you say the languages are? Just give us an idea of the situation?</p>
<p>SK: Well we are in a dilemma here at the moment where you have lots
of giant developments taking place, particularly in rural areas where
these languages and cultures exist. And they can't process this rapid
huge development that hits them against their face and therefore they
seem to run into these seem to run into these projects instead of
keeping their traditional languages or cultures. And that's the danger.</p>
<p>JT: Okay, so is it kind of say we take the LNG or agriculture projects for example..</p>
<p>SK: That's right yes</p>
<p>JT: Is it a case of these big western projects and sort of English and stuff becomes a dominant language kind of thing?</p>
<p>SK: That is right yes. Increasing pressure is so great, so that might
really be a factor that might cause languages to disappear.</p>
<p>JT: You say here out of 800 languages half of that number have fewer than 2000 speakers?</p>
<p>SK: That is right yes, so that is the real danger if we don't look
after them, you know. You know these languages, capture all kinds of
information you know. So if we don't look after them they will go and
they will go with all the information with them. Like genealogical
information, historical information, traditional lifestyle information
and all sorts of information. So that is the concern. It is not just
losing language but also the kinds of information that language codes
and expresses we might lose all those things.</p>
<p>JT: How should the government begin to help these languages?</p>
<p>SK: Well the first thing is the view about all those languages and
cultures. We haven't got strong views about ourselves, our languages, to
preserve or to revitalise them. So these are issues, so again it is
about our views, we undermine our own cultures and languages and we look
up on other peoples languages and cultures. So that becomes dangerous
so attitude becomes a problem from the government down to the grassroots
level. People want more of english rather than their vernacular
languages. So again the attitude becomes an issues which we really need
to address. One thing I am suggesting is we look at our major principles
of traditional societies and maybe have them as curriculum in the
school system. To introduce vernacular at an early age and keep it up
until maybe grade two or something. So they learn their vernacular
languages and then move on to English. In that sense we might keep the
languages going.</p><p><a href="http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/programmes/datelinepacific/audio/20169902/png-languages-at-risk">http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/programmes/datelinepacific/audio/20169902/png-languages-at-risk</a><br></p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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