Today there are about 6,000 languages in the world but about half of them are going to die out during the next century. 96% of the world’s languages are spoken by four per cent of its people.
Many events can kill a language: natural disasters, cultural assimilation, genocide, etc. On July 17 1998, an earthquake in Papua New Guinea, killed more than 2,200 people and displaced a further 10,000. As the survivors have relocated, will these communities and their languages survive the trauma of displacement?
Even if a people stay put, their language may still die as a result of cultural assimilation. At first, there is pressure on the people to speak the dominant language. Then there is a period of bilingualism. In the third stage, when the old language is giving way to the new, the younger generation find its old language less and less relevant. Those families that do continue to use the old language tend to do so in an idiosyncratic manner, resulting in “family dialects”. Within a generation, healthy bilingualism within a family can slip into self-conscious semilingualism, and thence into monolingualism.
We should care about dying languages for the same reason that we care when a species of animal or plant dies. It reduces the diversity of our planet. Encapsulated within a language is most of a community’s history, a large part of its cultural identity, and a wealth of knowledge which the rest of the world can access, such as knowledge of medical treatments from the folk medicine of an indigenous people.
A dying language will cause conflict within the individuals who have abandoned their ancestors’ language. The second generation, with battles over land claims and civil rights behind them, begins to reflect on the heritage they have lost. If only a modicum of effort had been devoted to language preservation, it would have left the option open for future generations to make their own choice.
Kommentaare ei ole:
Postita kommentaar