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Crystal, D. 2010. A Little Book of Language.

New Haven : Yale


University Press.
Dying languages
Speaking, writing, and signing are the three ways in which a language
lives and breathes. They are the three mediums through which a language is
passed on from one generation to the next. If a language is a healthy
language, this is happening all the time. Parents pass their language on to
their children, who pass it on to their children and the language lives on.
Languages like English, Spanish, and Chinese are healthy languages.
They exist in spoken, written, and signed forms, and theyre used by
hundreds of millions of people all over the world. But most of the 6,000 or so
of the worlds languages arent in such a healthy state. Theyre used by very
few people. The children arent learning them from their parents. And as a
result the languages are in real danger of dying out.
When does a language die?
A language dies when the last person who speaks it dies. And this is
happening in many parts of the world. There are several dozen languages
which have only one speaker left. And several more where the speakers are
just a few dozen or fewer. For example, many of the languages spoken by
the tribal peoples of Brazil or Indonesia have only a handful of speakers.
Languages which have only a few speakers, and which are likely to die
out soon, are called endangered languages. Most of the worlds endangered
languages are spoken in countries on either side of the equator. There are
hundreds of languages spoken in south-east Asia, in such countries as Papua
New Guinea. Hundreds more are spoken across India and Africa. Many more
are in South America. These are the places where languages are dying out
very quickly.
But we can find endangered languages anywhere. Most of the
Aboriginal languages of Australia are endangered. And so are the Celtic
languages of Britain, Ireland, and France. Fewer and fewer people speak
Gallic, the Celtic language of Scotland. And the last native speakers of
Manx, the language of the Isle of Man, died out a few decades ago.
Perhaps half the languages of the world are going to die out in the
next 100 years. Thats 3,000 languages disappearing in 1,200 months. If we
work out the average, well find that theres a language dying out
somewhere in the world every two weeks or so. This is much faster than
anything thats happened in the past.
Theres nothing new about a language dying. Languages have always
disappeared when the people who spoke them died out. Two thousand years
ago there were many languages spoken throughout the Middle East that no
longer exist today. Think of all the peoples who invented the writing systems
that I described in Chapter 16, such as the Hittites, the Assyrians, and the
Babylonians. Those cultures came and went, over thousands of years, as one
defeated another, and the languages disappeared along with the peoples.

We know something about these ancient languages because some of


them were written down. Unfortunately, many languages of the past were
never written down, so they are lost for ever. Thats still the case today.
About 2,000 of the worlds languages have never been written down. If they
die before linguists get a chance to record them, they too will be gone for
ever.
When a culture dies out, it leaves behind evidence of how the people
lived. Archaeologists can dig up all sorts of things pots, skeletons, boats,
coins, weapons, bits of houses but spoken language leaves nothing behind
when it disappears. After all, as we saw in Chapter 4, speech is only
vibrations in the air. So when a spoken language dies which has never been
recorded in some way, it is as if it has never been.
Theres nothing unusual about a single language dying. But whats
going on today is extraordinary, when we compare the situation to what has
happened in the past. Were seeing languages dying out on a massive scale.
Its a bit like whats happening to some species of plants and animals.
Theyre dying out faster than ever before. Why is this?
Plants and animals die out for all sorts of reasons, such as changes in
climate, the impact of new diseases, or changes in the way people use the
land. And some of these reasons apply to languages too. A natural disaster,
such as an earthquake or a tsunami, can destroy towns and villages, and kill
many people. But if the people are dead, or if their community is devastated,
then their language will die out too.
Humans can be the cause of language death. Hunters can kill all the
remaining animals in a species. Collectors can take all the remaining plants.
And governments can stop people using their language as we saw in
Chapter 13. If a language is banned, and the children are forbidden to learn
it, it will soon die out.
But the main reason that so many languages are endangered is not as
sudden or as dramatic as a tsunami or a banning. In most cases, the people
stop using their first language simply because they decide to use a different
one. This is why, for example, most people in Wales speak English or most
people in Brittany speak French. Over the years, families have gradually
stopped using one language and started using another.
Why have they done this? Its usually because the new language
promises them a better kind of life. In particular, theyll get a better job if
they learn the new language. Think of all the best jobs in the country
where you live. How many of them would you be able to do if you didnt
speak the main language of the country? None of them.
Now imagine being a member of a small tribe in Africa, America, or
Australia a few hundred years ago, when the British, Spanish, and others
were colonizing the world. In come the colonists with their guns and new
ways of life, and they take over your country. Theyre in charge, so if you
want to get on, in the new society, youve just got to learn their language.
And when that happens, its very easy to let your old language slip away.
Your children dont bother with it, because the new language is the really

useful one. Its fashionable. Its cool. Your old language is definitely uncool.
And gradually, it falls out of use.
It doesnt have to be that way. People can learn a new language
without having to lose their old one. Thats what bilingualism is all about, as
we saw in Chapter 13. Bilingualism lets you have your cake and eat it. The
new language opens the doors to the best jobs in society; the old language
allows you to keep your sense of who you are. It preserves your identity.
With two languages, you have the best of both worlds. These days, in many
countries, people have come to realize this. They see the importance of
preserving the language diversity of the world, just as they see the
importance of preserving the diversity of plants and animals. The world
governing bodies, such as the United Nations, have repeatedly drawn
attention to the issue. It isnt enough just to preserve the tangible heritage
of the Earth all the physical things we can see around us in the landscape,
such as deserts, forests, lakes, monuments, and buildings. Its also
important to preserve the intangible heritage all the things which show
how we live, such as music, dance, theatre, painting, crafts, and especially
languages.
How do we preserve languages? Three factors have to be present for
this to happen. The people themselves must want their language to survive.
The government of their country must want to help them. And money has to
be found to keep the language going. Its an expensive business. The
language has to be documented that is, written down and described in
grammars and dictionaries. Teachers have to be trained, books published,
street signs put up, community centres established, and lots more.
But when all three factors are in place, amazing things can be done.
New life can be brought into a language. The term is revitalization. The
language is revitalized. Weve seen it happen several times over the past 50
years. Probably the most famous case is the revival of Hebrew to serve as
the official language of modern Israel. Welsh, too, has done very well, after a
long period of decline. Today the number of speakers is increasing, and its
presence can be seen on street signs and in railway stations and wherever
you travel in Wales.
In New Zealand, the Maori language has been kept alive by a system
of language nests. These are organizations that provide children under five
with a homely setting in which they are intensively exposed to the language.
The staff are all Maori speakers from the local community. The hope is that
the children will keep their Maori skills alive after leaving the nests, and
that as they grow older they will in turn help new generations of young
children to learn the language.
Even an extinct language can be brought back to life, if conditions are
right. It must have been written down and described, or audiorecorded in
some way, and the people must want it back. This has happened with an
Aboriginal language of South Australia called Kaurna. The last native
speaker died in 1929, but in the 1980s a group of Kaurna people decided
that they wanted their language back. The language isnt dead, they said,

its only sleeping. Fortunately, material survived from the nineteenth


century so that a linguist was able to make a fresh description and help the
Kaurna people start learning the language again. Its taught in schools now.
One day, perhaps, some children will start learning it as their mother
tongue.
One of the jobs the linguist had to do was bring the vocabulary up to
date. The old Kaurna language had no words for television or mobile
phones! Thats the thing about a language: it never stands still. When we
study language, one of the most important topics is to investigate the way
languages change.
Parrot Talk
In 1801, an explorer called Alexander von Humboldt was searching for
the source of the Orinoco river in South America. He met some Carib
Indians who had recently attacked a neighbouring tribe. Theyd killed all the
people, but theyd brought the tribes parrots back home with them.
The parrots chattered away, like parrots do. And when von Humboldt
heard them talk, he realized that they were speaking the language of the
murdered Indians. He decided to write the words down, to capture the
sound of the language. There were no human speakers of the language left.
The parrots were all he had to go on.
Nearly 200 years later, an American sculptor called Rachel Berwick
decided to make the language come alive again. She got two South
American parrots and taught them to say some of the words that von
Humboldt had written down. Then she put them in a large cage surrounded
by foliage and jungle noises, and displayed them in a gallery. The parrots
happily chattered away.
Suddenly, the old language came alive again. Even though it was only
parrot-talk, hearing it sent shivers down the back of your neck.

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