Article from The New Republic online

[Anonby]

You've got to admit he has a point or two, eh?

I like his dig that "People who romanticize indigenous languages usually,
themselves, achieved comfortable positions in life by speaking and writing
one of the top ten tongues and by living in a society that has
single-language cohesion."

He gets a little shakier when he starts on his examples, though. For
instance, he states that..."when a rare language dies out, the culture it
served can continue, just in some other tongue. It is estimated, for
example, that 540 indigenous languages have been lost in Brazil since the
Portuguese arrived. Yet the ancient culture of Brazil has not been lost; it
now expresses itself in Portuguese." Uh, I don't think so. I think the
cultures of ancient Brazil has have mostly been lost, lockstep with their
languages. Whether or not the culture can continue in Portuguese depends on
your definition of culture, I suppose. From what I've seen, people who lose
their language sooner or later adopt the culture of the majority language.

I believe whether or not a group wants to preserve its language and culture
is up to them. What gets a little tricky is when the minority group wants to
preserve their language and culture with the funds of the majority group. I
wonder about motivations and the long term sustainability of such a project.

Stan Anonby



----- Original Message -----
From: "Harold F. Schiffman" <haroldfs at ccat.sas.upenn.edu>
To: "Language Policy-List" <lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2005 5:44 PM
Subject: Article from The New Republic online


> Anyone want to write a response to Mr. Easterbrook?
>
> February 23, 2005
> DAILY EXPRESS
> Word Perfect
> by Gregg Easterbrook
>
>
> Obviously it is interesting to know that sjonvarp is the Faroese word for
> television or that tl'imshya'isita'itlma is the Nootka word for inviting
> many people to a feast. More important, it is good that scholars are
> paying increasing attention to study of the world's estimated 6,000
> tongues. It is a positive development that indigenous languages, once
> actively repressed by colonialists, are now being encouraged in many
> settings. For instance the University of Hawaii once downplayed
> Hawaiian-language studies; in 2002, Hiapo Perreira became the first person
> to graduate from the university with a master's in Hawaiian, and his
> master's is believed to represent the first indigenous-language
> postgraduate degree conferred in the United States. But should we care
> that many languages are dying out in daily use? No. The sooner languages
> die out, the better.
>
> Estimates vary, but the standard projection is that about two dozen
> conversational languages die out each year; see the 2003 book Spoken Here:
> Travels Among Threatened Languages, by Mark Abley. According to this
> article, the last speaker of Jiwalri, an Australian bush language, died in
> 1976, taking the tongue with him. Fewer than 1,000 people today are
> thought to use Comanche as their daily language, meaning its chances of
> survival are slim. Recent years have seen an increase in claims that there
> is something worrisome, even something terrible, about a decline in the
> number of languages in everyday use. This 2000 article in a UNESCO
> publication called for "international action" to protect declining
> languages, especially aboriginal ones. Here, the Foundation for Endangered
> Languages proposes that there are "linguistic rights."
>
> Those who believe the disappearance of local languages is a problem no
> doubt chaffed last week when The New York Times ran this article, by James
> Brooke, reporting that Mongolia now discourages use of local languages and
> has a national goal of teaching all public-school students English.
> Brooke's story reports, "'I need 2,000 English teachers,' said Puntsag
> Tsagaan, Mongolia's minister of education, culture and science." Other
> developing-world countries are beginning to emphasize English-language
> education. This is strongly in the economic interest of developing world
> citizens.
>
>
>
>
>
> The world will be a better place as rare languages go out of usage. The
> fewer the tongues, the more easily societies communicate. Languages are
> barriers to trust and understanding. Even in well-off places with few
> social problems, language barriers create mistrust: Think of Quebec or
> Belgium. In places that aren't well-off, language arguments are a huge
> obstacle to social progress. Thus the fewer languages, the better--and I
> say this not just because English may win the competition. Mandarin might
> win; Barbara Wallraff of The Atlantic Monthly devoted a lengthy 2001 story
> to the idea that Mandarin will best English in the struggle to be the
> global tongue. Okay, maybe Mandarin comes out on top. As long as the
> number of languages in common usage keeps declining, I'll be happy.
>
> People who romanticize indigenous languages usually, themselves, achieved
> comfortable positions in life by speaking and writing one of the top ten
> tongues and by living in a society that has single-language cohesion. A
> person who communicates only in a rare language--especially a spoken-only
> dialect that cannot be written--is at a huge disadvantage in anything
> other than an isolated community. Why is Singapore so much more affluent
> than its neighbors? In part owing to a long-standing policy of teaching
> public-school students English. Someone safely tenured in a comfortable
> Western university might idealize living a subsistence lifestyle speaking
> a rare language unintelligible except to one's tribe. For citizens of the
> developing world, speaking a top ten language opens doors to a better
> life.
>
> Multiple languages arose because throughout history, many groups of people
> lived in isolation, interacting only with others like themselves. Through
> the last century, all or almost all isolated tribal groups have been
> found. Maybe there's still some small society in Amazonia that has not
> been contacted, but the number of men and women living without contact
> with the world surely now must be a tiny percentage of the human
> population. Loss of rare languages accompanies the integration of isolated
> groups into the larger world. Daily, the world gets more global, and the
> process appears irreversible. Languages would be expected to disappear as
> societies become global. They need to disappear, in order to allow people
> to communicate in an interconnected world.
>
> The sentiment that there's something terrible about languages going
> extinct confuses biodiversity with cultural diversity. When a rare species
> dies out, it's gone forever; when a rare language dies out, the culture it
> served can continue, just in some other tongue. It is estimated, for
> example, that 540 indigenous languages have been lost in Brazil since the
> Portuguese arrived. Yet the ancient culture of Brazil has not been lost;
> it now expresses itself in Portuguese. At the same time, almost any
> citizen of Brazil can talk to almost any other, as they share a common
> language. That's better than when there were 540 tongues preventing
> communication.
>
> Even if languages such as Comanche pass from daily use, scholars might
> continue to study them. Latin has not been a quotidian tongue in a
> millennium yet is still studied. Languages that are only spoken and cannot
> be written are another matter; when the last speakers die, these languages
> are gone. But the loss of minor languages spoken by isolated groups of
> people seems a small price to pay for improved communication for
> everybody. And of course if members of a small-language culture want to
> work to keep their tongue in use, that's great, so long as they know a
> major language as well. Hawaii may become a good test case. For at least a
> century, mainlanders discouraged the Hawaiian tongue. Now Hawaiian is
> making a comeback. If people in the state know both English and Hawaiian,
> fantastic. If Hawaiian speakers start to demand special privileges and
> exemptions, only ill can come of that.
>
> As globalism puts languages out of use, digital technology may provide a
> counterweight by keeping alive many languages that otherwise would
> expire--computers are good at remembering details and becoming good at
> remembering speech. And some forms of technology may make it easier for
> the world to accommodate large numbers of languages and still communicate.
> Microsoft, for instance, is translating Windows into Quechua, an
> indigenous language still used in Andean nations. If translation becomes
> ever easier, language barriers may mean less.
>
> Overall, though, the consolidation of language seems a positive trend.
> Having a few widely agreed upon international languages is good for
> everyone. Losing rare languages seems a minor problem at worst. The more
> people who speak English or Mandarin, the better.
>
> Gregg Easterbrook is a senior editor at TNR and a visiting fellow at the
> Brookings Institution.
>
>
> http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=Lm%2BuwXdN9rBSlfryKgfSjh%3D%3D
>