[lg policy] Living in the age of language death

Tue Nov 16 15:00:13 UTC 2010

Living in the age of language death

David HARRISON: Of 6,800 languages existing today, only 3,000 will
still be around in 2100
By Dmytro Drozdovsky, Vsesvit, special to The Day

In September, some Verkhovna Rada deputies launched an attempt to
change the status of the Russian language in Ukraine under the cover
of the purported desire to guarantee preservation and unfettered
development of regional languages. Unfortunately, the people’s elected
representatives have forgotten the sad experience of Ireland and
Belarus. In these countries, the desire to introduce English and
Russian at the official level (as it is proposed in Ukraine),
respectively, brought about tragic linguicide — today the Irish and
Belarusian languages belong to category of “the languages on the verge
of extinction.” Ultimately, the process of “language death” itself is
inevitable and natural. And herein lies the tragic essence of a
language: having been born, it must die one day.

So our goal is to keep the language alive at any price, to prevent it
from extinction, because the disappearance of a language means the
death of a nation, as the latter always exists through language.
Russians understand this perfectly, so they respect their language,
support it at an international level, while we, Ukrainians, strive to
do everything to eliminate our own history, mentality, and ethnicity,
with our own hands. In our case, the Ukrainian language is under
considerable pressure from Russian language. Well, it is historically
conditioned. The Crimea will not start to speak Ukrainian in a day or
a year. But we really need to teach Russophones respect for the
national language. Otherwise it will be a phantom, existing only on
paper, but dead in the mental space.

In the context of these considerations, it is important to return to
the comprehension of the nature of language death and identify, in a
professional manner, the differences between regional languages,
“endangered languages” and the status of the Russian language in
Ukraine. We offer an interview with Professor, Dr. David Harrison
(Swarthmore College).

On what major problems are you working now, as a linguistics scholar?

“As a theorist of language, I, above all, study phonology (sound
structure) and morphology (inflection). I also deal with the
harmonization of the sounds in words in different languages. The
examples that I’ve found provide interesting precedents, challenging
the classical linguistic theory and helping to model general cognitive
functions of language, such as image recognition. I study these
samples empirically (during fieldwork in Siberia or India) as well as
by means of computer simulations.

“I am a linguist, so I accept the position that languages exist
exclusively within the cultural matrix, i.e., to study them, I need to
know the cultural context. It is languages that form the structure of
our knowledge. My ethnographic research is based on information about
the natives, folklore, oral epics, speculative system, for example (as
with the Chulym language) within the context of Asian nomads’ domestic
life.

“Sometimes I imagine myself a zoologist, who is discovering new
species. It’s an amazing feeling. “As a scholar I can not remain
indifferent, seeing dozens of languages disappear every year. The two
languages that I currently study, Tofa and Os, have only 40 native
speakers each. About half of the world’s languages will disappear this
century. The loss will be catastrophic.”

Are forecasts really so dire? Can anything be done to save the
endangered languages?

“This question has recently been discussed by linguists from around
the world in Seattle at the annual linguistic conference. It is very
hard to answer it.

“We can definitely state that at least half of the 6,800 contemporary
living languages will disappear by 2050. The most recent example is
the Chulym language, which I had found in the half-dead state. Today
this language is used by about 40 people in central Siberia, and all
native speakers are at least 50 years old. The distinct features of
the language are its grammar rules: for example, the construction of
sentences containing negation, or forms of interrogative sentences.
You see, every language has its own ecosystem, and we have no right to
destroy these areas.

“For example, speakers of this newly-discovered Chulym language
practice hunting, collecting, and fishing — all that our ancestors did
thousands of years ago. They have their legends, folklore, are
brilliantly versed in medical herbs (having not read any books on
them!). They live in six-people families, with their homes far away
from each other, often they mix with Russian population. Only 35
people still speak the language perfectly. To reconstitute the grammar
of the language, I have found one speaker, member of the tribe, who
had invented, only imagine it, his own writing system. I plan to use
it with minor modifications to publish the first book of grammar for
this language. But in a few years, there will be no language, it will
disappear forever. Russia ought to do everything to keep such
languages from extinction, but is something actually being done? We,
linguists have to record these languages, their grammar, so that they
may sometime be revived. But linguists are not able to manage
languages and ethnicities! We need strong support from governments.
But the fact remains: a large part of living languages is gradually
fading. And we should come to terms with it, because the process is
irreversible. Another thing is that the pace of the process can be
different, and sometimes linguistic policies accelerate these
processes. You know, it’s not only the loss of a language, it is also
the death of an ethnic group. This is very dangerous in terms of
culture, because we lose the knowledge related to traditions, models
of philosophy rooted in human consciousness. It is bad from the
scholar’s point of view, since we cease to understand how the
processes of perception of the world through language is organized.”

Why is there such a rapid elimination of languages and their speakers
in the world today?

“The reasons for the disappearance of languages can be described as
ethnic wars and genocide, natural disasters, the assimilation of small
ethnic groups and their transition to the dominant languages,
including English, French, Chinese, and Russian in their respective
areas. Monster states are not interested in the development of
minority languages, languages which are unique, as some of them exist
over the millennia in constant form (existing before English and
Russian even appeared!). But we sometimes forget the natural flow of
things and bring some sense to our life with political documents that
do not reflect the nature of phenomena. According to our institute, of
6,800 languages existing today, only 3,000 will still be around in
2100.

“There were cases when each week a language ‘died’ somewhere on the
planet and this trend is considered normal. The problem is that now
the figure is growing exponentially. Over the next century, about
6,200 languages, dialects and subdialects can disappear from
circulation.”

To which peoples is this process especially dangerous?

“Oblivion threatens, firstly, languages of small ethnic groups.
According to UNESCO, a language may be transmitted from generation to
generation, when the number of its speakers is no less than 100,000.
Currently, the Eyak language of indigenous inhabitants of Alaska is
used by only one inhabitant of the same state, the Udege dialect of
Siberia is spoken by about 100 people, and only six Brazilian Indians
language communicate in their tribe’s Arikapu language. You see, the
statistics are sad. Interestingly, more than half of all the world’s
languages are found in just eight countries: Papua New Guinea,
Indonesia, Nigeria, India, Mexico, Cameroon, Australia and Brazil. But
despite the languages’ deaths, the reverse process is also happening.
So, for example, Hebrew was once revived and is now spoken by more
than five million Israelis. Over 10,000 people in Hawaii speak their
native language, almost forgotten just a decade ago; Mexicans want to
restore lost languages of the Mayan tribes, and New Zealanders do it
with the Maori language. But the proportion of the dead languages to
the revived is catastrophic.”

But if the pace of language extinction is not reduced, will the
mankind come to speak a universal language?

“In reality, a universal language can only be imposed if it is easy to
communicate in, for example, as for English in the academic world or
the business world (and you notice that in our history all the time
there were attempts to impose on societies some universal language:
Latin, French, and now English). But linguistic differences can not be
canceled. On the contrary, we constantly see new internal differences
in spoken languages, so that spoken English today, for example, in the
Appalachians is different from Standard English. This is a live
intralingual process. Convergence and divergence are natural
phenomena. It is completely another thing that extralinguistic
intervention in these processes leads to disaster. Imagine only, in
the 21st century about half of the languages that exist today in the
world will go into oblivion! These are the survey’s data, which we
published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Linguistics.

“Globalization of the world and especially languages is associated
with very serious problems. A global language is a global problem. I
want to draw attention to the dangers that are hidden in this process.
Worldwide, the projects are now discussed, under which secondary
schools will teach only one foreign language, English. Several years
ago many countries abolished the quota for foreign languages, so
parents and children began to freely choose the language, and number
of English learners have increased by 60-80 percent. This is a serious
problem. Imagine what it would be, if all of us saw the world through
English-speaking peoples’ eyes? The language globalization is
dangerous for English-speaking peoples, too. I have the impression
that now culture, embedded in the English language, and even national
identity of English-speaking nations is an open display, they are the
world’s property. Look at how much effort and money is spent by
America and Britain to establish centers of learning English in the
world. But to be, I am sure, we need even more money to be spent on
saving small ethnic groups’ half-dead languages, such as the Tofa,
Arikapu, etc. I think such projects are relevant to the Ukrainian
language policy as well. You could do more to increase the number of
Ukrainian studies centres abroad, as it is the main means to promote
one’s cultural policy in the world. The English have the British
Council, the Germans have the Goethe-Institute, and the Americans have
a whole network of centres. Speaking as a linguist, it seems to me
that in Ukraine there is a lot of talk about language, but few
meaningful decisions at the government and presidential level to
support the Ukrainian language at the state level.”

Mr. Harrison, what could you say about the situation of the Ukrainian
language? Now Ukraine is engulfed in a fierce debate on granting
Russian strong support as a regional language, not so long ago, the
bill “On Languages in Ukraine” was announced...

“You know, this bill is built on a non-linguistic (or even
anti-linguistic) basis. I oppose such political interference in the
language affairs, knowing in particular the history of the Ukrainian
language itself. They’d do better by registering a bill to support the
Ukrainian language, to increase the hours of teaching the Ukrainian
language in secondary school! The history of the Ukrainian language is
a history of linguicide, that is, conscious, deliberate destruction of
language as the main feature of an ethnic group, nation. Linguicide is
a prerequisite for mass denationalization and mankurtization1 because
otherwise loss of historical memory and ethnic immunity is simply
impossible, and without this loss there could not be assimilation,
that is, absorption of one people by another one. That is why the
enslaver never forgets to destroy the language of the oppressed
people. Given Ukraine’s history, today your state should follow the
language policy of France, not that of the US or Russia. It ought to
be understood by the Verkhovna Rada and Viktor Yanukovych himself,
who, despite all things to the contrary, impressed the US during his
visit. He must become a statesman who understands that the political
and electoral flirting is one thing, while the real national language
support is quite another. Without Ukrainian Ukraine can’t exist within
itself and the world.”

 1 Mankurts are characters of the famous Soviet Kyrgyz author Chingiz
Aitmatov’s novel; according to his narration, they were young men
captured during intertribal warfare in the steppes who were tortured
in order to transform them into obedient slaves not remembering
anything from their past, not even their mothers’ names. The word
became the pejorative term for “traitors of the nation” in the
post-Soviet countries, especially Russified natives.

http://www.day.kiev.ua/316136

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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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