Languages Are Dying and We Should Do Something About It

When I say the words endangered or extinct the first thing that comes to your mind is probably some cute and furry animal. Don’t get me wrong, I love animals as much as the next person, but there is another endangered species we should all be paying attention to. Languages are being seriously threatened and without action are in danger of being lost forever.

 

Many of you may know that Ancient Greek and Latin are referred to as “dead” languages. However, these are not examples of the extinction of languages. These languages didn’t die but rather, they evolved. Ancient Greek evolved into modern Greek, Latin evolved into modern Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian and more. These languages evolved the same way Modern English did from Middle English.

How do languages become extinct? 

Genocide is one-way languages are lost. For instance, in the early 19th century, an unknown number of languages died when European invaders exterminated the Tasmanians. More commonly, languages are lost due to pressures on communities to integrate with larger, more powerful groups. This has happened in Canada. There are 70 Indigenous languages still spoken in Canada. Of those 70, more than two-thirds are endangered while the rest are vulnerable. Only 4% of Indigenous people in British Columbia fluently speak their native language and most of them are older than 65. This can be largely attributed to language suppression in residential schools set up by the government. Communities can often be forced to give up their ethnic and cultural identity. Turkey has banned many public displays of the Kurdish language in Turkey.

Current trends show that endangered languages will be extinct in the next century. Many languages aren’t learned by new generations of children. There are dozens of languages that have only one native speaker still living, so with their death will also comes the death of their language. There are also many languages that are being replaced by languages more widely used in their region. Some examples of widely used or dominant languages include English in the United States and Spanish in Mexico. 

 

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has a classification system to classify how ‘in trouble’ a language is:

• Vulnerable – most children speak the language, but it may be restricted to certain domains (e.g., home)

• Definitely endangered – children no longer learn the language as a ‘mother tongue’ in the home

• Severely endangered – language is spoken by grandparents and older generations; while the parent generation may understand it, they do not speak it to children or among themselves

• Critically endangered – the youngest speakers are grandparents and older, and they speak the language partially and infrequently

• Extinct – there are no speakers left

Some people are making moves to combat this issue. Bogre Udell and Frederico Andrade launched a project in 2014 to make the first public archive of every language in the world. They’ve already documented more than 350 languages, which they are tracking online, and plan to hit 1,000 in the coming years. According to UNESCO, between 1950 and 2010, 230 languages went extinct. Borgre Udell says that “When humanity loses a language, we also lose the potential for greater diversity in art, music, literature, and oral traditions”. 

Now is the time to take charge and preserve the beautiful piece of culture that is language. If people can learn J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional Elvish languages, you can definitely become bilingual or even multilingual. 

Want to help out? Consider learning some of these endangered languages:

• Yiddish (Israel)

• Romani

• Scottish Gaelic 

• Navajo 

• Mehri (Yemen, Oman, Kuwait)

• Irish/Gaelic

Do you want to learn more about which languages are in trouble? UNESCO has an interactive map that helps identify what languages are in danger and how much danger they are in. 

UNESCO interactive map: http://www.unesco.org/languages-atlas/ 

 

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References 

https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/what-endangered-language 

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/06/21/indigenous-languages_a_23465069/ 

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/apr/15/language-extinct-endangered 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/04/saving-dying-disappearing-languages-wikitongues-culture/#close 

• culture
• education
• preservation