Linguistics expert to speak on language extinction, conservation (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

16-Feb-2007
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/uoaf-let021507.php

Linguistics expert to speak on language extinction, conservation
Annual gathering to highlight International Polar Year

Fairbanks, Alaska—Humans speak more than 6,000 languages. Nearly all of
them could be extinct in the next two centuries.

So what?

University of Alaska Fairbanks professor emeritus Michael Krauss will
attempt to answer that question during his presentation this week at
the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting,
which begins today in San Francisco.

"I claim that it is catastrophic for the future of mankind," Krauss
said. "It should be as scary as losing 90 percent of the biological
species."

The reasons are multiple, he said. From an ethical standpoint, all
languages are of equal value, he said. But the value of a language goes
far beyond academic discourse, Krauss said. Languages contain the
intellectual wisdom of populations of people. They contain their
observations of and adaptations to the world around them. Humanity
became human in a complex system of languages that interacted with each
other.

"That is somehow interdependent such that we lose sections of it at the
same peril that we lose sections of the biosphere," Krauss said. "Every
time we lose (a language), we lose that much also of our adaptability
and our diversity that gives us our strength and our ability to
survive."

Krauss is one of four researchers scheduled to speak during a session on
the dynamics of extinction Friday, Feb. 16, 2007 from 8:30 – 11:30 a.m.
at the AAAS meeting at the Hilton San Francisco. The cross-disciplinary
session focuses broadly on the phenomenon of extinction, including
factors that cause endangerment and extinction and interventions that
can delay or end the extinction process.

###

Krauss has been affiliated with UAF for more than four decades. He is
founder of UAF's Alaska Native Language Center and recently received
the Ken Hale prize for lifetime achievement from the Society for the
Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas.