Endangered Languages in Museum

Tue Sep 3 07:39:17 UTC 2013

I am somewhat late to the party, but one concrete thought I had regarding
the exhibit: does it have to be a metaphor? If I wanted to drive in the
point that language extinction is not just sad for us linguists, I think I
would use terminal speakers - possibly even one concrete terminal
speakers. (Others will have better and more complete stories than I do.) I
would think one could get children to relate to a person that speaks a
language, but has nobody with whom to speak it. Again, the "species"
analogy works here: think "The Last of its Kind". This is of course a
simplified view of language extinction (last speaker is a competent
speaker for whom said language is maybe even dominant, no passive
speakers), but I think a good narrative could br found here.

Best,
Jeremy

On Mo, 2.09.2013, 12:58, Johanna Laakso wrote:
> Dear Irena,
>
> "death" is not just a shocking and dramatic metaphor, in the case of
> language extinction it is in some ways fundamentally wrong.
>
> For an individual organism, man, animal or plant, death is the natural end
> of their naturally finite life. But languages are not individual
> organisms. Rather, they are like biological species or populations – they
> consist of individuals (individual speakers, or the "grammars" in the
> heads of the individual speakers) which die and, normally, are replaced.
> In this recreation process, language changes and may gradually develop
> into something completely different. But it is not "naturally" destined to
> die out, to become extinct. Languages do not die a natural death, although
> they can be killed.
>
> Comparing languages with individual living organisms "normalises" language
> extinction and invokes the obsolete ideas of languages having "childhood",
> "youth", "full manhood" and "old age", which would imply that some
> languages are on a higher stage of development than others. These are
> popular ideas and powerful images which, IMHO, we as linguists must fight.
>
> Best
> Johanna Laakso
> --
> Univ.Prof. Dr. Johanna Laakso
> Universität Wien, Institut für Europäische und Vergleichende Sprach- und
> Literaturwissenschaft (EVSL)
> Abteilung Finno-Ugristik
> Campus AAKH Spitalgasse 2-4 Hof 7
> A-1090 Wien
> johanna.laakso at univie.ac.at • http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Johanna.Laakso/
> Project ELDIA: http://www.eldia-project.org/
>
>
>
>
> Irena Kolbas kirjoitti 2.9.2013 kello 12.39:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I am curator and linguist and I'm working on documentation and
>> musealisaton on endangered languages in Croatia since 2001.
>>
>> I don't understand what's wrong with coffin metaphor? Aren't we talking
>> about dying languages? They are dying together with their culture. Man
>> is dying, do you say to the children that the dead man is sleeping? If
>> so, why?  Children should be tought that dying is a part of everday
>> life! Why euphemism like sleeping, or tree or other suggested metaphors?
>> It is the role of museum to teach the children (and adults too), not to
>> telling them fairy tales. We must prepare children for life, or is it
>> idea to keep the children away from everyday life?
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> Irena Kolbas
>>
>> From: Endangered Languages List
>> [mailto:ENDANGERED-LANGUAGES-L at listserv.linguistlist.org] On Behalf Of
>> Johanna Laakso
>> Sent: Monday, September 02, 2013 6:37 AM
>> To: ENDANGERED-LANGUAGES-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
>> Subject: Re: Endangered Languages in Museum
>>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> thanks for the interesting discussion! I also like the tree metaphor
>> (which, of course, may be overused as well, see e.g.
>> http://www.hf.uio.no/multiling/english/ ).
>>
>> But, whatever the metaphor, I think that the greatest challenge in
>> spreading information about endangered languages is avoiding "the
>> extinction narrative". Any metaphor taken from nature is especially
>> prone to this vulgar Darwinist idea of some languages "being less fit
>> for survival", which means that their extinction is natural and
>> expectable and due to some laws of nature. The extinction narrative also
>> often comes with an expert-centred, static and reified idea of language:
>> it is up to linguists, the Great White Hunters, to "save the language",
>> and a language is "saved" when it is documented and a grammar, a
>> dictionary and a critical mass of texts and/or recordings are available.
>> (Of course, it is part of the truth that a language properly documented
>> and with a viable standard may well have more prestige and better
>> chances to survive.)
>>
>> So any research into endangered languages is readily presented in the
>> media as a "rescue mission", although, as we all know, the truth is that
>> no well-meaning outsider can save a language if the speakers themselves
>> have decided to give it up. On the other hand, emphasising the
>> importance of speaker agency should not mean denying the reality of
>> inequality, discrimination and oppression: if speakers give up their
>> language, they do it for what they feel to be a compelling reason and
>> often silently mourn the loss of the old language.
>>
>> Perhaps a garden would be an even better metaphor than a tree. A healthy
>> language includes many varieties, it can have many speakers or just a
>> few, it can be of measurable economic importance or just the carrier of
>> values which can never be measured with money, it must be tended but it
>> also takes favourable external circumstances to make a garden really
>> flourish... And even a neglected and withered garden can be made living
>> and green again.
>>
>> A beautiful example of successful revitalisation is Inari Sámi in
>> Finland. See the book by Marja-Liisa Olthuis, Suvi Kivelä and Tove
>> Skutnabb-Kangas (
>> http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?K=9781847698872 ), the
>> accompanying website ( http://www.casle.fi/ ) and the film by Suvi
>> Kivelä (with English subtitles: http://youtu.be/e0YcIkUoEhc ) nicely
>> demonstrating the key factors to this success: activism and committed
>> people in the community, and the crucial role of the "language nest",
>> the immersion kindergarten which by now has raised dozens of new
>> speakers .
>>
>> Best
>> Johanna Laakso
>> --
>> Univ.Prof. Dr. Johanna Laakso
>> Universität Wien, Institut für Europäische und Vergleichende Sprach- und
>> Literaturwissenschaft (EVSL)
>> Abteilung Finno-Ugristik
>> Campus AAKH Spitalgasse 2-4 Hof 7
>> A-1090 Wien
>> johanna.laakso at univie.ac.at •
>> http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Johanna.Laakso/
>> Project ELDIA: http://www.eldia-project.org/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Andreas Kyriacou kirjoitti 1.9.2013 kello 21.43:
>>
>>
>> I listened to a talk on endangered languages by Balthasar Bickel of
>> University Zürich today. He used Baruya as an example of how language
>> loss can result in the disappearance of cultural knowledge. He listed 23
>> words, which their mother tongue provides to label different varieties
>> of sugarcane. As speakers switch to the local lingua franca, tok pisin,
>> these are all replaced by the single term 'suga'.
>>
>> Maybe you could use such an example to showcase to a lay audience what
>> consequences language loss can have.
>>
>> I too find the coffin a problematic metaphor, not mainly because of its
>> negative connotation as such, but because it's so overused. Every other
>> demonstration seems to involve carrying a coffin around.
>>
>> Andreas
>>
>> On 30.08.2013, at 12:54, Lena Terhart <lena.terhart at GMX.DE> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Peter,
>> you may be right that a coffin is not very creative nor very sensitive
>> towards speakers of endangered languages, especially the ones who take
>> effort to revitalise their languages, BUT
>> - the whole exhibition is about language and not language endangerment
>> or language diversity, it is mostly based on German word plays, rhymes
>> etc.
>> - and I suppose that 99.9% of the visitors have never ever heard about
>> endangered languages
>> - therefore, we need one strong metaphor that is understandable for
>> children from 5 years on without too much explaining text
>> Language revitalisation is definitely worth mentioning and representing,
>> but it is only a consequence of languages dying or languages that cease
>> to be spoken if you prefer to put it like that.
>> Robert Amery proposed to exhibit a phoenix together with the coffin to
>> represent language revitalisation. I like that idea and will propose it
>> to the ones in charge of the exhibition. I am also open to other ideas,
>> but the final conception of the exhibition is planned for next week
>> already.
>> Lena
>>
>> Am 30.08.2013 um 06:56 schrieb Peter Austin:
>>
>>
>> Will there be a day when this death and dying metaphor can be put to
>> rest? A coffin? My goodness, can't we be a little bit more creative? And
>> a little bit more sensitive?
>>
>> How about sharing some lessons from communities working to revitalise
>> their languages? There are lots of games, apps and other fun interactive
>> things for kids to do that are freely available on the internet now. Put
>> a nice package of them together and sensitise the kids to how languages
>> are threatened but communities are responding to strengthen their
>> languages. You could start by looking at www.firstvoices.com and moving
>> on from there.
>>
>> That's my 2p worth.
>>
>> Peter Austin
>>
>>
>> On Friday, 30 August 2013, Lena Terhart <lena.terhart at gmx.de> wrote:
>> > Dear Colleagues,
>> >
>> > the UNIKATUM children's museum in Leipzig, Germany, is preparing an
>> exhibition on language
>> (http://www.kindermuseum-unikatum.de/papperlapapp.html in German). I
>> thought it would be nice to present language endangerment as part of
>> the exhibition and together with the responsible people of the museum,
>> we are now thinking about one exhibit, probably a coffin that shall be
>> filled with words that may die out.
>> >
>> > In order to present a big variety of endangered languages, I would
>> like to ask you to contribute with
>> > - a list of max. 5 words in the endangered language (basic vocabulary,
>> something that may be interesting for children, e.g. animals, plants,
>> natural phenomena, or maybe also simple verbs)
>> > - in the orthographic convention you use
>> > - together with a translation
>> > - and some basic info about the geographic location and number and age
>> of speakers or alternatively a link to your website where I can find
>> the information
>> >
>> > Additionally, photographs of the speakers and/or environment could be
>> very nice, and ideally also recordings of the words (MP3), but that is
>> not a requisite - I know that the search for individual words and
>> cutting process may be too time-consuming.
>> >
>> > The mounting of the exhibition will start on the 16th of september
>> already so that I need the word lists until the 13th latest.
>> >
>> > Thanks!
>> > Lena
>> >
>>
>> --
>> Prof Peter K. Austin
>> Marit Rausing Chair in Field Linguistics
>> Director, Endangered Languages Academic Programme
>> Research Tutor and PhD Convenor
>> Department of Linguistics, SOAS
>> Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
>> London WC1H 0XG
>> United Kingdom
>>
>> web: http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/index.php?cd=pa
>>
>>
>>
>> ---
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>>
>
>