Language Endangerment, Death, and Revival

HIF 3620

Representations & Self-Representations

Laura A. Janda

Overview

• Scale of language loss

• Factors of endangerment

• Intervention before it’s too late

• Promoting embedded languages

• The most important ingredient for success

Scale of language loss (Ethnologue)

• Number of languages: 6912• 347 (~5%) languages have >1M speakers =

94% of world population • Remaining 95% of languages spoken by 6% of

world population• Of these 95%:

– 497 (~7%) languages “nearly extinct” (<50 speakers)– Most of remaining languages endangered (exact level

of endangerment hard to determine)• Median size of a language in the world: ~3000

speakers

North America as an example (www.indigenous-language.org)

• Before European invasion:– 20M Native Americans, 300

languages

• Today:– 2M Native Americans, 175

languages– Of these 175 languages

• 55 have <5 speakers = virtually extinct • 100 endangered • 20 may survive, are spoken by children

Australia as an example

• Before European invasion:– 1M Indigenous Australians, 500 languages

• Today:– 200 languages survive, all are endangered– 20 of these are spoken by children

Scale of language loss – What does this mean?

• About 90% of human knowledge encoded in languages is:– The property of indigenous peoples– On the verge of being lost

• Erosion of human knowledge is proceeding at an unprecedented pace, erasing indigenous identities and societies

Factors of endangerment• Pressures exerted by matrix languages• Lack of orthography, standardization,

literary tradition• Dialectal fragmentation• Domain loss• Personal choices, largely made by people

<5 years old

Timely intervention

• Speech communities don’t decide to get rid of their own languages

• Individuals (usually children) decide not to use them

• By the time the speech community notices the effect of these personal decisions, it is usually too late to save the language

• Linguists are discouraged from working on “small” or “isolated” languages

Promoting embedded languages

• Assess level of endangerment

• Connect with groups that are– Local, national, international– Political, social, business

• Target types of pressure exerted by matrix languages

• Develop specific strategies (suggestions in next presentation)

What is the most important ingredient?

• Hint: It’s not money, or size, or power

• The speech community must WANT to save their language– Recognize importance for identity– Take ownership of issues– Have a vision

• In the presence of sufficient desire and imagination, anything is possible

Discussion of reading from “Endangered Languages”