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<DIV>Frances Karttunen recently posted an interesting message containing the
following paragraph:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"People who are struggling just to live find the issue that Mark
considers<BR>grave--that of maintaining indigenous languages and letting them
be<BR>studied--of little urgency by comparison with making sure their
children<BR>survive and have some sort of future. That route is generally
perceived as<BR>through making children monolingual in the dominant culture's
language, even<BR>though that means losing their own language heritage.
Linguists find this<BR>hard to take, but it's really not our business to preach
to people weighing<BR>physical survival against language survival. (This
is true worldwide. At<BR>least half the languages of the world will
probably no longer be spoken by<BR>anyone after another generation or
two.)"</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Linguistic extinction can be avoided by guaranteeing linguistic rights. The
process involves reeducating societies, on local, regional, national and
international levels, much as the environmental and feminist movements have
done since around 1970. A few years ago a serious attempt was made to
define the linguistic rights of peoples: the Universal Declaration of Linguistic
Rights. The project was initiated in 1994 by International PEN's Translations
and Linguistic Rights Committee, with the collaboration of the Escarré
International Centre for Ethnic Minorities and Nations. A large international
interdisciplinary team, including writers, linguists, specialists in
international law and representatives of ethnic minorities from several
continents, produced twelve drafts, culminating in the declaration which was
presented in Barcelona in 1996. This document is now under consideration in
a UNESCO committee for adoption by the UN as an international convention.
Meanwhile, this document has inspired legislative initiatives in Guatemala and
Mexico. Those interested may visit the Web site at:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><A
href="http://www.troc.es/mercator/dudl-gb.htm">http://www.troc.es/mercator/dudl-gb.htm</A><BR><BR>Perhaps
one of the most important points is that, by insuring a linguistic community's
rights to use its language within its territory, one of the benefits would be
the creation of relatively well-paid and high-prestige jobs for those who are
fluent and literate in their mother tongue, thus addressing the problem that
Frances Karttunen accurately described in the paragraph quoted above.</DIV>
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<DIV>Peace,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>David Wright</DIV>
<DIV>Follow-Up Scientific Council</DIV>
<DIV>Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights</DIV></BODY></HTML>