Dying Words -- Part I (fwd)

[Phil Cash Cash]

Dying Words -- Linguists Express Concern Over Fate Of Endangered
Languages (Part 1)

http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2003/08/15082003160729.asp

  By Charles Carlson

 As many as half of the world's 6,000 languages face extinction in the
coming decades if measures are not taken to preserve and maintain them.
This was the subject of a recent conference of international linguists
in the Czech capital, Prague. Participants learned of new efforts being
undertaken to preserve an important part of the world's cultural
heritage. In this first of a two-part series, RFE/RL reports on
tentative efforts to revive an aboriginal Australian language that
hasn't been spoken in three decades.

Prague, 15 August 2003 (RFE/RL) --  Alf Palmer's native language is
Warrangu, an Australian aboriginal language that was once spoken around
the city of Townsville in North Queensland. Palmer was the last native
speaker of Warrangu. He died in the early 1970s and with him, his
language.

 Warrangu was the subject of a talk given by Japanese professor Tasaku
Tsunoda to an International Congress of Linguists in the Czech capital
Prague last month. Tsunoda carried out fieldwork in the Townsville area
between 1971 and 1974. During this period he met Alf Palmer, who taught
Tsunoda his language.

 "I'm the last one to speak Warrangu," Alf Palmer told Tsunoda. "When I
die, this language will die.  I'll teach you everything I know, so put
it down properly."

Professor Tsunoda said his association with Palmer first alerted him to
the problem of dying languages. "In retrospect, it was Alf Palmer who
taught me the importance of documenting endangered languages. His was
perhaps one of the earliest responses to the crisis of language
endangerment," he said.

More than a quarter of a century later, a few groups of Australians,
including some members of the Warrangu group, started a movement to
revive their ancestral languages. Tsunoda was asked to come to
Australia and to teach Warrangu to the grandchildren and
great-grandchildren of Alf Palmer. He spent several weeks giving
lessons on Warrangu and playing the tapes he had recorded during his
meetings with Palmer.

During the lessons, Tsunoda looked around the room and noticed tears in
the eyes of Alf Palmer's grandchildren and great-grandchildren. "These
tears meant how much their ancestral language means to them, and this
in turn shows that these tears are the very reason why we should be
engaged in the activities to combat the crisis of language
endangerment," he said.

 One of Palmer's grandchildren is now hoping that the study of the
Warrangu language will be included in the curriculum of the local
university. Tsunoda said this is only a dream at this stage.

 Other speakers at the Prague conference expressed concern that up to 50
percent of the world's 6,000 languages face the threat of extinction,
saying, "This is something humanity cannot afford to let happen."

The conference organizer, professor Ferenc Kiefer of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences, said: "There are various calculations, but the
pessimist would say that only a couple [hundred] of these [languages]
will survive. The optimist would say that maybe 2,000, [or] two-thirds,
of these languages [would survive] -- and that is a lot."

Other speakers emphasized it is not enough to study endangered
languages, they must be documented as well. If documentation is
sufficient, this can be used in preparations for actually teaching the
language to younger generations, as Tsunoda did.

 This is the situation facing Ket, a language spoken in the Russian
Federation along the Yenisei river in the Krasnoyarsk region. Only two
or three native Ket speakers remain, so it is especially important that
scholars go there to record and document the language.

 Professor Douglas Whalen, a linguist, is president and founder of the
Endangered Language Fund at Yale University. He told RFE/RL: "Languages
have been endangered for some years. They have been dying off
throughout history, but the rate of dying off seems to have accelerated
as much as we can tell. When the Linguistic Society of America was
founded in 1925, [early expert] Leonard Bloomfield noted that the
American languages in particular were dying at a rapid rate, and felt
that this was happening without them being documented very well, in
part because of lack of funds and organization."

Realizing the importance of studying and documenting endangered
languages, the University of London's School of Oriental and African
Studies recently established a chair for language documentation and
description. The chair is funded by the Lisbet Rausing Charitable Fund,
which established a fund of 20 million British pounds ($32 million) for
work on endangered languages.

 Professor Peter Austin, head of the program, listed the program's three
main objectives in a conversation with RFE/RL. The first is an academic
program to train a new generation of researchers to work on endangered
languages. The second will document those languages, while the third
will create an international archive.

 "The second is a documentation program, which is a series of research
grants available to any serious researcher to apply to receive funding
to do research on endangered languages around the world; and the third
is an endangered-languages archive, and this will be a major
international archive of material on languages from all over the world,
endangered languages," Austin said.

 The preservation of smaller languages is a problem the European Union
is continuing to grapple with, and the problem will intensify next year
when the EU expands to take on 10 mostly Eastern European new members.
Part 2 will look at the EU's efforts to protect some of Europe's mother
tongues.