"One Language Disappears Every 14 Days"
by Oshee Martin
In the last 500 years the world has lost half of our language heritage. According to linguists and researchers another half of the remaining languages could vanish within just this century, as three-thousand of the estimated 6000 languages are considered "moribund"-- they are spoken by adults and not taught to the next generation. An additional 40 percent are also considered critical as the number of children who can speak the language declines. Only about 600 languages according to researchers are considered safe. Indigenous languages are particularly threatened. Even languages that were strong just two decades ago may be wiped out after the elders pass on.
Another report by the Living Languages Institute for Endangered Languages stated that one language disappears every 14 days. That is an extinction rate exceeding that of our plant's biodiversity--our birds, mammals, and plants. The loss of the Earth's cultural diversity is more understated that the current ecological destruction.
The loss of language is more than the demise of a communication system; it is a key reflection at best of a struggling culture, at worst a dying culture. Language weaves together and articulates the accumulation of thousand year-old societies and civilizations. Often within a single generation, distinct ways of existing, aspects of the great heritage of Humanity are vanishing along with their contributions: priceless legacies of collective knowledge, traditional teachings, philosophies, rare art, ecological wisdom, and worldviews. There are some Indigenous people who say, when the language goes the culture ceases to exist. There is no way to transmit a people's universal perspective, their unique way of seeing the world and their place in it in any other way than through the ancestral tongue of the people.
According to the National Geographic Society there are five language hot-spots where extinction rate is exceedingly high. In the United States these include areas of the Pacific Northwest and the region that encompasses Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, where 40 languages spoken by Native American tribes are in peril. In Oklahoma only two of the 23 languages are being learned by children. Included globally are northern Australia, central South America, and eastern Siberia.
Aside from this hot spot list, really all across the United States, these national treasures, are slipping away. The crisis is astronomical. Of the estimated 175 languages still spoken in the United States, 155 (89%) are moribund. Aside from a sparse number of tribal words, the children are speaking English only.
Many linguists study what causes the death of a language, which mainly results from a complexity of internal and external pressures that influence a community to take on the language of another society. These factors generally result from the encroachment of one society over another society, affecting the autonomy of the culture, either by forced assimilation and/or by slower more insidious methods creating changes in values, rituals, or economic and political life. Trade, migration, intermarriage, and religious conversion also are factors that contribute to language death. At some point multilingual parents may no longer consider it necessary or worthwhile for the future of their children to communicate in their own language.
Many Native American schools are taking on the responsibility to teach children the tribal language. Obviously traditionally language was never passed down through formal means such as a school system. The reservation schools were originally set-up by Federal Government with Native Americans. Yet today because tribal members are taking stands to become more involved in their children's education, and as a result of the critical situation, tribes are recognizing that schools are now a viable way of transmitting the language to their children.
According to the Native American Languages Act of 1990, there is convincing evidence that student achievement and performance, community and school pride, and education opportunity is clearly and directly tied to respect for, and support of, the first language of the child or student. Many Native American communities have developed tribal language recovery programs with some success. Funds are being made available to tribes for language preservation either federally or more and more through foundations for tribes who know how to access these funds; however, resources are still limited and the task is often daunting. American Indian comminutes have numerous pressing needs. Communities with the most challenges, economically are generally those where only a few fluent speakers remain.
Encouraging is the tribal college movement which began in 1968 in the United States with the founding of Navajo Community College, known today as Dine' College. This movement has expanded. The American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) listed 31 college, institute, and university members. Recently, Sinte Gleska University, Oglala Lakota College, Dine' College, and Haskell, an intertribal college started four-year teacher education programs, which with the exception of Haskell, tribal language and cultural requirements are an integral part of their programs.
Ideally however, the key to language preservation is in the intergenerational transmission of the language in the home by families, not in government polices or laws. Outside of homes, language use in early childhood centers is important. Computers are the most debatable of language teaching tools. They are not cost-effective and by-pass intergenerational teaching and mainly involve technical experts. However, they do have their place in the recording of information. If starting a language preservation program, the best way is to research what models have proven effective in other Indigenous communities. It is widely believed that today's generation is the most critical in saving the languages that remain, that we are presently at a cross-roads.
Whether, the language each one of us speaks is endanger or not, the question is , are we as human race willing to loose major and precious aspects of our own evolution? Language is a time-line of our history--our existence. What kind of world will this be for humanity, when the distinctive and irreplaceable knowledge, dreams and visions of man that have been passed down for millenniums are gone?
Some of this research was gathered from the following WEB Addresses or to seek further information:
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