the argument for language maintenance

[Stephen Morey]

Dear All,

Very interesting discussion. I thought I'd say something about this.

I'm facing a situation in North East India where we have a group of languages currently listed by Ethnologue and ISO as a single language, but there are 71 distinct groups, at least some of which are mutually unintelligible (though some are plainly intelligible) - there could be 10s of languages on a mutual intelligibility criterion.

We don't have good descriptions of them, though one or two varieties now have reasonable text corpora in perparation, each group has a low population (200 to 1000, I'd say, with maybe 3 groups a little more than that). There are not yet any successful literacy programmes in any of them. Maybe 50% of the population is Christian and there are bible translations. The one printed bible is in a variety for which there is just bible and hymn book, no books of stories, childrens books or anything like that, and as far as I can tell no teaching of the orthography to children or any kind of literacy program. Two of the non-Christian communities have books in English which include fragments of their own traditional stories and songs in non-standard orthographies. My best estimate is that there are 6 Tangsa orthographies in India, mostly only used and understood by those who devised them.

Given the way that the world's resources are divided up, I'm afraid there is almost no chance that there will be literacy programs developed for these communities before most of the linguistic diversity is lost. In this situation, its no wonder that those people in the Tangsa community interested in language development would like to develop 'a common language'. But there's no sign that that is succeeding either.

Stephen



________________________________
From: alex blaszak [ablaszak at hotmail.com]
Sent: 26 March 2010 10:48
To: aidan at usyd.edu.au; r-n-l-d at unimelb.edu.au
Subject: RE: the argument for language maintenance

Hello,

The one language, or go with the stronger languages only argument seems to be simply a "too hard basket" approach. Its sort of like saying we will only give housing support to one group of Aboriginal people, not all groups. On what basis?

Focussing only on stronger languages misses the point that language can be a perfect opportunity for capacity-building, empowerment (and engaging the local non-inidigenous community too), as it can be so localised, and can work on a really relevant and manageable scale.

Focussing on the stornger languages only to some degree defeats the purpose of maintenance on any language, because it means that you are no longer doing it for the sake of the community and people to whom it is relevant, but just for posterity's sake. Of course that is always important too, and every language has something to offer the world and enhancing our understanidng of it, but it surely must also be driven by the need and relevance to the people from whom the language comes...

> Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:23:51 +1100
> From: aidan at usyd.edu.au
> Subject: RE: the argument for language maintenance
> To: r-n-l-d at unimelb.edu.au
>
> I remember being in an undergraduate class and going to a local Aborigial
> Language centre, in Glebe I think, where this bloke gave a short talk
> about how important language was to him.
>
> He'd grown up without any knowledge of his language (may have been Dharug,
> I suppose, but I can't remember) and was pretty messed up because of it -
> drugs and alcohol, abuse of others, etc. He said that when he was able to
> find out something about his own culture and language, he more or less
> found a bit of his identity that had been lacking before and - you know
> the story - quit grog and drugs and became a better husband.
>
> Anecdata I know, but I think it's true that one's language, especially if
> it's a minority/indigenous language specific to a small ethnic group as is
> the case in most of Aboriginal Australia, is incredibly important in
> people's lives. We Anglophones tend not to realise this because there's
> absolutely no chance in our lifetimes that we'll find ourselves in the
> minority.
>
> -
>
> I have a mate who's an ecologist and works with endangered amphibian
> species. A very intelligent and friendly guy. One night though, he started
> asking me why I bother with language maintenance on Wagiman, a language
> with around 4-7 speakers (depending on where you draw the line on
> fluency). Why wouldn't we, as linguists, put all our efforts into 'saving'
> one of the languages that is most likely to survive. I thought this was
> extremely odd coming from someone who works with endangered frogs.
>
> (Tangent: there's a nice analogy with native frog species and the virulent
> spread of Cane Toads - reported in both Sydney and Kununurra last week)
>
> To get back to the main point, I haven't yet had anyone seriously claim
> that there were too many aboriginal languages, just that we shouldn't be
> doing quite so much to maintain the most critically endangered but instead
> support the stronger languages, the most likely to survive. As a
> syntactician, I'd probably counter that Australia represents a massively
> diverse linguistic area and each language has the potential to increase
> our understanding of how language works. Letting languages die without
> doing anything about it is like shredding evidence.
>
> --
> Aidan Wilson
>
> The University of Sydney
> +612 9036 9558
> +61428 458 969
> aidan.wilson at usyd.edu.au
>
> On Fri, 26 Mar 2010, Dr Christina Eira - VACL wrote:
>
> > One position would be that the argument is only taking into account the
> > single, relatively recent nation 'Australia' and forgetting that the
> > older continent has/had many nations (and cultures and languages). It's
> > kinda like saying there should only be one language for Africa.
> >
> > Dr Christina Eira
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Margaret Carew [mailto:margaret.carew at batchelor.edu.au]
> > Sent: Thursday, 25 March 2010 10:40 PM
> > To: r-n-l-d at unimelb.edu.au
> > Subject: FW: the argument for language maintenance
> >
> >
> > Hi there
> >
> > I got this question - see below - from a (non-linguist) colleague. I
> > thought it would be interesting to conduct a quick survey amongst RNLD
> > members, so please read on...
> >
> > Folks,
> >
> > When you have a quiet reflective moment...
> >
> > re: the argument for language maintenance
> >
> > What are the standard replies given to people who complain that there
> > are too many Aboriginal languages for language maintenance, that
> > supporting all those languages will cost too much, etc.
> >
> > And New Zealand is given as an example where language maint is
> > practical, because only 1 language.
> >
> > I'm thinking there must be some standard ideas on this question in
> > linguistic circles.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >

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