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Fri Jan 4 15:39:13 UTC 2019

The internet is helping to revive minority languages
03 January 2019
by Aisling Irwin
<https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/internet-helping-revive-minority-languages.html#>
<https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/internet-helping-revive-minority-languages.html#>
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Languages carry with them a whole world of traditions, concepts and ways of
seeing the world. Image credit - CC0

*Europe’s minority languages have been squeezed by nation-building,
urbanisation and the ‘lingua francas’ of the internet, according to **Professor
Anneli Sarh**imaa* <https://www.sneb.uni-mainz.de/team/anneli-sarhimaa/>*,
specialist in Northern European and Baltic languages and cultures at the
University of Mainz, Germany. But one lesson she has learned from
researching the fate of the Finnic language Karelian, spoken in Finland and
north-western Russia, is that digital media can also help revitalise them.*

*How many minority languages are there in the world and in Europe?*
See also

   - Language lessons
   <https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/language-lessons.html>

‘There are maybe 6,000 or 7,000 languages spoken in the world and it is
estimated that in a century at least a half of them will have died out. In
Europe at the moment 79 indigenous regional and minority languages, spoken
by in total 203 national minorities or linguistic groups, have been
acknowledged in the European Charter of Regional and Minority Languages
<https://www.coe.int/en/web/european-charter-regional-or-minority-languages>.
But it’s quite difficult to measure simply because countries can choose
what languages they include in international agreements. In Italy alone it
is said that there are maybe 50 minority languages spoken – (but
officially) these languages are considered dialects of Italian.’

*Why do languages die out?*

‘Because there is some stronger language that is spoken in the same area
and whose speakers have the political prestige and the power to decide what
should be spoken. This was one of the consequences of nation state-building
in Europe since the late 19th century.

‘Processes like urbanisation and migration are also a threat for
traditional ways of life which, at least in the past, used to go hand in
hand with linguistic diversity.

‘Then of course there are the international lingua francas – most notably
English, which is spreading everywhere.’

*What is the point in safeguarding languages?*

‘When a language is dying out, a whole world of traditions and concepts and
ways of seeing the world dies with it. Languages are the immaterial
richness of mankind. And languages are important for the speakers. It’s a
human right for a person to speak, and transfer to the next generation,
their own language.’

‘It’s a human right for a person to speak, and transfer to the next
generation, their own language.’

Professor Anneli Sarhimaa, University of Mainz, Germany

*Is the internet driving out minority languages?*

‘The internet is an extremely important way of supporting the
revitalisation of minority languages. New technology makes it possible for
speakers of minority languages who live in diaspora, or live scattered over
a vast geographical area, to communicate regardless limitations of space or
time.

‘But one problem is that many minority languages have not been
standardised, so the algorithms don’t even recognise the materials that
have been written in a particular language and are available online -
simply because people write it in different ways.

‘Then of course there are no interfaces (such as web browsers) available in
many minority languages. There are languages like Basque where there are
interfaces, online dictionaries, translation programmes and so on – and
then there are languages such as Karelian which does not have basically
anything yet.’

*How do you preserve a language?*

‘It has to do with the decisions of families about what language they want
to pass to their children. This decision comes from the identity of the
parents. The worst possible decision that parents can make is to leave it
to the kid, saying: “When they grow older they can decide.” How can they
decide if they never learned the minority language in the first place at
all?

‘Then families have to be supported by society, of course, because it’s not
enough that children hear it at home. They also have to have kindergarten
and school teaching about the language and, in the best scenario, *in* the
language. It’s also important that the language has some kind of domain of
use outside the most intimate networks of relatives, such as in a religious
community or within the dominant language mass media.’

[image: Parents should not leave it up to kids to decide whether to learn a
minority language, says Prof. Anneli Sarhimaa. Image credit - Johannes
Gutenberg-University Mainz]

Parents should not leave it up to kids to decide whether to learn a
minority language, says Prof. Anneli Sarhimaa. Image credit - Johannes
Gutenberg-University Mainz

*Have you come across any resurgent minority languages in your region of
central, eastern and northern Europe?*

‘Not yet. One language that is close to my own heart is Karelian. It used
to be spoken in the area that Finland ceded to the Soviet Union as a
consequence of the Second World War. Finland evacuated the ceded area and
everyone was given a new home in some other part of Finland.

‘It was bad for the language, among other things, because people moved very
quickly to cities and so the traditional communities were then broken.
Young people from the ceded areas did not choose to fall in love on the
basis of joint language and cultural heritage: many got married to Finns
and then the language of the new, young family usually was Finnish. And
Karelian was never supported in Finland (by the government). It’s a very
common story.’

*As part of the ELDIA project, you developed a ’barometer’ for measuring
the vitality of minority **languages. What did that find about Karelian?*

‘(It) measured the health of 12 Finno-Ugrian languages. Karelian in Finland
was one of the three most endangered. Speakers use Karelian rarely – and
predominantly with family members and some friends; people who know it do
not transmit it to their children any longer. Although an autochthonous
(indigenous) language in Finland, Karelian is less protected by legislation
than new immigrant languages are. Karelian is not a part of the educational
system at all.

‘The barometer showed that it is not enough to permit the use of a language
or prohibit discrimination – language policy decisions must influence
individual and social structures on a wide scale. Karelian should be
supported in the education system more concretely. Information is also
needed by healthcare personnel on how to face and act with elderly
Karelians in institutional care who possibly only can speak Karelian.’

*Is there any hope for Karelian?*

‘I have known so many people who thought that they were the last speakers
of Karelian in Finland because they did not know any other speakers. And
what I find very nice now is that every week I get to know new people who
speak fluent Karelian. This has a lot to do with online communities,
different kinds of social media groups in which Karelian is used. So in
that sense Karelian appears to me to be much stronger nowadays than it was
8 or 10 years ago. But I wouldn’t call it a success story yet because a lot
needs to be done.’

-- 
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

 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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