UN's Mother Language Day Focuses On Conserving World's Linguistic Heritage (fwd)

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UN's Mother Language Day Focuses On Conserving World's Linguistic
Heritage
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/2/99827E2F-A43E-4298-9F68-450EFC54E99D.html

By Charles Carlson

UNESCO -- the UN's Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization --
will mark on 23 February the fifth International Mother Language Day,
which celebrates the world's nearly 6,000 languages as the "shared
heritage of humanity." Linguists warn, however, that at least 40
percent of these languages are expected to die out during this century.

Prague, 20 February 2004 (RFE/RL) -- In a statement marking
International Mother Language Day, Konchiro Matsuura, the
director-general of UNESCO, cited the UN holiday as a way to "celebrate
nearly 6,000 languages, all creations of human genius, each expressing
in a unique way a vision of the world, a coherent system of values and
meanings."

He said it is a "genuine challenge" to ensure that these languages -- 95
percent of which are spoken by only 4 percent of the world's population
-- continue to be used alongside the world's major languages.

By celebrating International Mother Language day, UNESCO is striving to
contribute to the protection of the world's cultural diversity.

"Every time we lose a language, we lose one vision of the world."

David Crystal, one of the world's foremost authorities on language,
spoke with RFE/RL recently about the importance of language diversity
and the need to preserve languages that are endangered: "Language
diversity is the equivalent of human diversity," he said. "The human
race has been so successful on the planet because of its ability to
adapt to an enormous range of circumstances. I think language is the
intellectual equivalent of our biological capabilities. It's so
important, first to be able to keep our minds busy, as it were, and one
of the ways in which we can do this is by seeing how each language
captures a vision of the world in a different way. Every time we lose a
language, we lose one vision of the world."

UNESCO's Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural
Heritage -- adopted by the UNESCO General Conference last October --
makes explicit reference to languages as vehicles of the international
cultural heritage.

There is no consensus about the number of languages spoken in the world
today because there is no general agreement on what constitutes a
language and what constitutes a dialect.

Nicholas Ostler is the president of the Society for Endangered
Languages, based in Bath, England. Ostler further alludes to the
seriousness of the situation: "The situation of the languages of the
world at the moment is a fairly parlous one. There are reckoned to be
between 6,000 and 7,000 languages in the world today. And the median
size of a language is 6,000 people, which means that most of the
languages of the world -- or at least half of them -- have fewer than
6,000 people [speaking them]."

It becomes imperative, therefore, that endangered languages at least be
documented, if not saved. Ostler: "Some of these languages, maybe half
of them, have been contacted by linguists and are known of, are
described in various ways. But many more, which would amount to perhaps
2,000 languages in the world, have never been contacted in this way.
And so, if they cease to be spoken, it will be as if they had never
been. Nobody would know what these languages have been like." It is
estimated that, on average, two languages disappear each month.

Endangered languages are distributed evenly around the world. An
ethnologic database maintained by SIL International, a Christian
missionary organization, lists 417 languages as "nearly extinct," with
only a few, elderly, speakers still living.

Regarding the distribution of these languages, Ostler said: "The
situation of languages all over the world is very, very varied. In
Europe and in places where Western civilization, such as it is, has
been developed over a long period, the languages tend to have literate
traditions and to be known about. Even one of the weakest languages in
Europe, Cornish, has a literary tradition which goes back many
centuries. But in most of the rest of the world -- in Africa, in the
Americas, in Asia, and in Austral-Asia -- most languages live in a
situation where the written word is not used. There is no literature,
and hence, there tends to be no permanent record."

Festivities at UNESCO headquarters in Paris will include a keynote
speech by Matsuura; songs sung in their local languages by children
from Armenia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Japan, and Madagascar; and the
showing of extracts from a documentary on endangered languages called
"The Last Word." Activities will also take place in countries
throughout the world.