What Future For Pacific Languages? (fwd)

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What Future For Pacific Languages?
By Darrell Tryon
Posted Tuesday, November 8, 2005

Overview

The languages of the Pacific include all of the vernacular languages of
greater New Guinea (including West Papua and Papua New Guinea), the
Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Polynesia and
Micronesia. This represents a total of about 1250 distinct languages,
which are members of two very large language families, the Papuan
Family (or Families) and the Austronesian or Malayo-Polynesian Family.

The Papuan languages are spoken in nearly all of the non-coastal areas
of greater New Guinea, in some islands in eastern Indonesia. To the
east of the great island of New Guinea, Papuan languages are also found
in New Ireland, New Britain and Bougainville (all part of Papua New
Guinea), with a sprinkling of Papuan languages in the Solomons.

The Austronesian family of languages extends from Taiwan, where there
are twenty indigenous Austronesian languages, through the Philippines,
most of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, Madagascar in the Indian
Ocean. Nearer to home, Austronesian languages are spoken in most
coastal regions of greater New Guinea, in most of the Solomons, and
throughout Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji (with the exception of the
Indian population), and all of the islands of Micronesia and Polynesia
as far east as Easter Island.
In addition to these vernacular languages, there are three major
metropolitan languages, English, French and Spanish, and a number of
pidgins and creoles, including Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea), Pijin
(Solomon Islands) and Bislama (Vanuatu), to say nothing of Pidgin
Fijian and Fiji Hindi.

Another phenomenon to be considered is that of Pacific Islander
diaspora, which describes the situation in which many Pacific Islands
states have large overseas populations, for example Niue (with 1,800 on
Niue and 16,000 in NZ), Samoa (with nearly 200,000 in NZ and a similar
number at home). The same applies to Tonga, Fiji, the Cook Islands and
Wallis and Futuna. We will discuss the consequences of this diaspora a
little later.

Language and dialect

What is the difference between a language and a dialect? A commonly made
distinction is based on mutual comprehensibility. Where two speech
varieties are mutually intelligible, they are normally considered to
constitute dialects of one and the same language. Where intelligibility
is marginal, very limited or non-existent between two speech
communities, then it is usually considered that we are dealing with
separate languages.

Why so many languages?

The Pacific area boasts the greatest linguistic diversity in the world,
with more than a thousand indigenous tongues. Not only are there
astounding numbers of languages, but the languages themselves are very
diverse. This is probably due to extensive contact between the more
recently arrived Austronesian-speaking populations and the Papuan
populations whose presence in Papua New Guinea goes back almost 50,000
years. The Papuan languages themselves have become very diverse, simply
because of regular change and development over a very long period. (In
fact they have become so diverse that linguists have yet to demonstrate
that they are all genetically related. However at least 430 of the 750
Papuan languages have now been shown to be related, and ongoing
research is likely to demonstrate that they all related, albeit
distantly in some cases). The surprisingly high number of languages is
may be ascribed to a number of factors, including physical isolation
and separation, as well as Melanesian agricultural techniques, which
constantly requires new land.

The roles of the languages

The metropolitan languages, English and French in the main, play a major
national role in most of the Pacific Island states, primarily as
languages of education. These are the major languages of communication
with the outside world. The pidgin and creole languages, Bislama in the
case of Vanuatu, act as languages of inter-island and inter-community
communication across local language boundaries. This is especially
useful in Vanuatu, where both English and French are the official
languages of education, with little real bilingualism between the two.

The vernacular languages generally play a local role, used for family
and community communication within each island in Vanuatu. They are
extremely important cultural identity markers, reflecting the cultural
richness of the country. Vernacular languages number just over 100 in
Vanuatu today, with an average of one language per two thousand
inhabitants, one of the highest ratios in the world.

Language endangerment

Right across the Pacific, many of the vernacular languages are under
threat from one direction or another. Even some of the bigger languages
face serious danger of disappearance.

In New Caledonia, for example, the largest language is Drehu, the
language of the island of Lifou in the Loyalty Islands. This language
has roughly 15,000 speakers. Normally such a language would not be
considered to be under threat. However, this is rapidly becoming the
case. For there is a very large Lifou population living in the greater
Noumea area as there is a strong move to the New Caledonian mainland,
chiefly for economic reasons. This is not a new phenomenon. However,
the result is alarming in that large numbers of young Lifou people are
today no longer to speak their mother tongue with confidence. The
language of opportunity in the Southern Province of New Caledonia is
French, the language of instruction throughout the country. Children
are sent to their original home island over the long summer school
break in the hope that they will somehow acquire the language skills in
Drehu that are lacking on the New Caledonian mainland. The results are
far from satisfactory, the role of Drehu being rapidly limited to
communication with grand-parents and customary greetings and exchanges.
Lifou community leaders in Noumea are expressing increasing concern at
the emerging situation.

Indeed, a recent study of language practice in mixed Melanesian
communities around Noumea, focusing on the Riviere Salee community,
showed that hardly any of those interviewed use their mother tongue
except for communicating with older members of their home communities.
Rather, they almost always express themselves in French. Indeed, the
author of the study (Sophie Barneche, Gens de Noumea, Paris:
L’Harmattan 2005) reveals that the residents of the Riviere Salee
community acknowledge that they speak a non-standard, some would say
sub-standard, French. Community members have made a deliberate choice,
in the absence of a local vernacular mother tongue, to use this
particular variety of French as their identity marker.

In French Polynesia, the major indigenous language, Tahitian, is
undergoing considerable pressure from French and from the Anglophone
world. At the same time the French spoken by the majority of the
Polynesian population is strongly marked by Tahitian language
structures and expressions.

In Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, Melanesian pidgins are
used as the major language of all three parliaments. What emerges is
often a basic pidgin heavily overlaid with English terms and
expressions, often incomprehensible to rural listeners.

The major vector of language endangerment, and indeed of the language
mixing so common today, is rapidly increasing urbanization, as people
move into the towns in search of employment as the old subsistence
economy gives way to a cash economy. The nearer a local vernacular
language is to a major urban area, the greater the threat to its long
term survival. To this, we should add parents’ expectations for their
children. In many parts of the Pacific parents see a mastery of English
or French as the key to economic success, and are prepared to sacrifice
even their mother tongues in this quest.

Does it matter?

Does it really matter that local vernaculars may be sacrificed on the
altar of economic advancement? The answer is a resounding “Yes”. It is
important that communities around the world resist the pressures of
ever increasing globalization and preserve their precious cultural and
linguistic heritage. For each language encapsulates an individual
culture, a way of conceptualizing the world. The way in which Pacific
languages conceptualise time and space, the way in which people and
objects are categorized, is far removed from the concepts which
underlie European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages, for example.
Even within Vanuatu each language has a subtly different way of
expressing its view of the world, in the same way as English and
French, both European languages, express very different ways of
organizing their conceptual worlds.
Inevitably languages will be lost, even in Vanuatu, over the coming
decades. However, the languages which are passed down from parent to
child will continue to survive for as long as this investment by
parents is made, and as long as the roles of local vernacular languages
are maintained at present levels, that they fully serve their
communities and are not reduced to play a simply ceremonial role.

Darrell Tryon
Men’s Fieldworkers’ Workshop
Vanuatu Cultural Centre