On Tuesday the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages revealed new data on the well-documented, rapid loss of languages spoken worldwide. Half the roughly 7,000 tongues now in existence — some spoken by only a handful of elderly people and a few by just a single person — will likely be extinct by the end of this century. That’s one every two weeks (a stat everybody on this story picks up).

The October issue of the Nat’l Geographic Magazine highlights the issue, hence the sudden news campaign. The news’s meat is identification of five “hot spots” where rich diversity of language yet remains, but where losses also are rapid. (Pic hi res) Topping the list is northern Australia. Others include parts of the Pacific Northwest in the US and Canada, eastern Siberia, central South America including Amazonia, and a swatch of the US running from New Mexico into Texas and Oklahoma.

The loss of language is, in most respects, a marker for loss of cultural diversity. The extinction of a language, Thomas H. Maugh II reports in the Los Angeles Times via quote from a lead source, “translates into a loss of knowledge.” John Noble Wilford sums it up in the NYTimes thus — some vanish “in an instant, at the death of the sole surviving speaker” while others evaporate slowly as they are “overwhelmed by the dominant language at school, in the marketplace, and on television.” At least half die with no written record.

A sensible person must mourn these fading languages and cultures. But no sign at all of cynicism or argument appears in today’s accounts. Many indigenous cultures are fighting hard to revive and extend their original languages, as they should … but surely it might be all right to at least suggest that this loss is nothing new and neither is the loss of nuanced knowledge that goes with it. To be truly cynical, surely it is permissible to at least suggest in print that one may ask: so what? There seems to be confusion here between information, and symbols for that information. Immense linquistic diversity died in the spread of Arabic across the middle east and north Africa, ditto with Mandarin and Cantonese in China, the Latinate languages in Europe, and so on. Is there any measurable indication that those areas are, on balance, worse off now? One can enjoy Homer without reading him in Old Greek (although, true, maybe not as much). Nearly all info can be expressed in different languages, and in a given language with different words. Some communities die out and take equally important information with them while speaking a dominant language that sails on in a wider community. And how about the irony, amid the lament of old tongues’ disappearance, of education system efforts in the US to enforce standard English – discouraging new languages from emerging? (remember ebonics? It was turned into a joke). The Tracker is unsure what to believe, but news accounts all appear to accept without argument the viewpoint of the primary news sources.

-CP

Other stories:

AP Randolph E. Schmid with an effective, focussed lede on a tongue with but one remaining speaker; USA Today Elizabeth Weise says each language “represents millennia of human knowledge” (but does what’s left really still contain that lore? A few old people talking a language possess millennia of their ancestors’ knowledge?); Independent (UK) Claire Soares reports one reason Nivkh language is giving way to Russian is that the former requires 26 different ways to count to three, depending on what’s counted; Nat’l Geo News Stefan Lovgren; Wash. Post Rick Weiss says Oklahoma now has a “dubious distinction” as one of languages’ worst hot spots; Reuters Will Dunham puts “alarm” in the lede;

Grist for the Mill:

Nat’l Geographic’s “Enduring Voices – Language Hotspots Program.” (superb maps, data, etc.) ; Living Tongues Inst. for Endangered Languages;

Plus: Via Amazon.com a new book, “When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge” by K. David Harrison (one of today’s news’s sources).

Also See: For one glimpse, chosen at random, of a Native American community’s program for nourishing its original tongue: Eagle Village First Nation (Quebec) Algonquin Page;

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 10:54 am and is filed under Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.