Language preservation

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Language preservation is the preservation of endangered or dead languages. With language death, studies in linguistics, anthropology, prehistory and psychology lose diversity. [1] As history is remembered with the help of historic preservation, language preservation maintains dying or dead languages for future studies in such fields. Organizations such as 7000 Languages [2] and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages document and teach endangered languages as a way of preserving languages. Sometimes parts of languages are preserved in museums, such as tablets containing Cuneiform writing from Mesopotamia. Additionally, dictionaries have been published to help keep record of languages, such as the Kalapuya dictionary [3] published by the Siletz tribe in Oregon.

Contents

Cuneiform tablets preserved in a museum. Mesopotamian Cuneiform Tablets.jpg
Cuneiform tablets preserved in a museum.

Language is an important part of any society, because it enables people to communicate and express themselves. When a language dies out, future generations lose a vital part of the culture that is necessary to completely understand it. This makes language a vulnerable aspect of cultural heritage, and it becomes especially important to preserve it. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),from facts published in their "Atlas of Languages in Danger of Disappearing," there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken worldwide today, and half of the world's population speaks the eight most common. [4]

More than 3,000 languages are reportedly spoken by fewer than 10,000 people each. Ethnologue, a reference work published by SIL International, has cataloged the world's known living languages, and it estimates that 417 languages are on the verge of extinction. [5] Language protection is protection of cultural heritage, as Karl von Habsburg, President of Blue Shield International, states. "Today, on average, we lose one language in the world every six weeks. There are approximately 6800 languages. But four percent of the population speaks 96 percent of the languages, and 96 percent of the population speaks four percent of the languages. These four percent are spoken by large language groups and are therefore not at risk. But 96 percent of the languages we know are more or less at risk. You have to treat them like extinct species." [6]

Reasons for language endangerment or extinction

There are different factors that can put a language in danger of becoming extinct. One is when a language is no longer being taught to the children of the community, or at least to a large number of the children. In these cases, the remaining fluent speakers of the language are generally the older members of the community, and when they pass on, the language dies out with them.

Child speakers are not enough to ensure the survival of a language however. If the children who do speak the language are relocated to another area where it is not spoken, it becomes endangered. Political and military turmoil can also endanger a language. [4] When people are forced from their homes into new lands, they may have to learn the language of the new area to adapt, and they end up losing their language. Likewise, when a country or territory is successfully invaded, the population may be forced to learn the invader's language.

A language can also become associated with a lower social class. [4] In this instance, parents will encourage their children to use the language used more often in society to distance themselves from the perceived lower class. Within one or two generations of this occurrence, the language can easily be lost.

Methods of Preservation

Schooling

One way to preserve languages is to encourage younger generations to speak their native language as they grow, so that they will then teach their children the language as well. Introducing local native languages in schools would accelerate this process. However, school systems are experiencing a decline in incorporating foreign language, especially in the United States. According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American students are first introduced to secondary-language-learning in either middle or high school, yet there has been a 17% decline in middle schools teaching secondary languages between 1996-2008. [7] Marty Abbott, the executive director of the American Council on the 7 Teaching of Foreign Languages, considers the decline and lack of foreign language curricula in American schools as a matter of a lack of confidence students exhibit when learning new languages. [8]

Global efforts have been made, as well, on including native local languages in public schools to foster cultural growth. Introduced in India from a recommendation by the University Education Commission, the three-language formula became a foundation for a balanced linguistic policy. When it was concocted, the three languages were English, Hindi, and a local tongue. Although this program failed in India due to lack of public fervor and government funding, it thrived in Kazakhstan, where their three languages are English, Kazakh, and Russian. English served as a 'world' language that was seen as a push for economic and business prowess on the international level, while Kazakh and Russian were seen as the glue to Kazakhstan's culture and nationality. [9]

Modern Technology

The internet can be used to raise awareness about the issues of language extinction and language preservation. It can be used to translate, catalog, store, and provide information and access to languages. New technologies such as podcasts can be used to preserve the spoken versions of languages, and written documents can preserve information about the native literature and linguistics of languages.

The international internet provider VeriSign estimates that 65-70% of all internet content is in English. [10]

Using written documents to preserve information about the native literature and linguistics is also not without potential problems. Just because a language is written down, this does not mean it will survive. Written information in book or manuscript form is subject to acid issues, binding problems, environmental monitoring problems, and security concerns.

Technology can also be used to preserve the integrity of spoken versions of languages. Many of the same techniques used in recording oral history can be used to preserve spoken languages. Preservationists can use reel-to-reel audio tape recordings, along with video recordings, and new technologies like podcasts to record spoken accounts of languages. Technology is also vulnerable to new technology. Preservation efforts would fail if the technology to listen to or watch certain media such as audio tape recordings or video tapes is lost.

Examples

The Administration for Native Americans has published the "Reference Guide for Establishing Archives and Repositories," which explains why language repositories are vital to long-term language preservation efforts. [11] The guide offers practical advice on what to preserve and why; it explains what a language repository is, how to build one, and the costs involved; and lists other resources for creating an archive and repository.

The Kalapuya dictionary published by the Siletz tribe in Oregon was fundraised through an online platform, GoFundMe, and as of March 2022 they published 150 copies after raising $13,000. The Siletz tribe is able to speak Kalapuya at a preschool level, due to a lack of documentation of the language. [12] These dictionaries are offered to be sold by complete sets through the GoFundMe website if a person donates $150 and emails the organizer.

Lingua Libre

Lingua Libre is an online collaborative project and tool by the Wikimedia France association, which can be used as a tool for Language Preservation. Lingua Libre enables one to record words, phrases, or sentences of any language, oral (audio recording) or signed (video recording). It is a highly efficient method to record endangered languages since up to 1000 words can be recorded per hour. All the content is under Free License, and speakers of minority languages are encouraged to record their own dialects.

See also

Related Research Articles

A lingua franca, also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a native language or dialect, particularly when it is a third language that is distinct from both of the speakers' native languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Endangered language</span> Language that is at risk of going extinct

An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead language". If no one can speak the language at all, it becomes an "extinct language". A dead language may still be studied through recordings or writings, but it is still dead or extinct unless there are fluent speakers. Although languages have always become extinct throughout human history, they are currently dying at an accelerated rate because of globalization, mass migration, cultural replacement, imperialism, neocolonialism and linguicide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indigenous languages of the Americas</span>

The Indigenous languages of the Americas are the languages that were used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas before the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples. Over a thousand of these languages are still used today, while many more are now extinct. The Indigenous languages of the Americas are not all related to each other; instead, they are classified into a hundred or so language families, as well as a number of extinct languages that are unclassified due to the lack of information on them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Extinct language</span> Language that no longer has any first-language or second-language speakers

An extinct language is a language that no longer has any first-language or second-language speakers, especially if the language also has no living descendants. In contrast, a dead language is a language that no longer has any first-language speakers, but does have second-language speakers, such as Latin. A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group; these languages are often undergoing a process of revitalisation. Languages that have first-language speakers are known as modern or living languages to contrast them with dead languages, especially in educational contexts.

The Coquille are a Native American people who historically lived in the Coquille River watershed and nearby coast south of Coos Bay. They were signatories of the Oregon Coast Tribes Treaty of 1855 and were subsequently removed to the Siletz Reservation in northwestern Oregon in 1856. Most Coquille people today live there as members of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, but some whose ancestors remained in the traditional homeland or fled the reservation now make up the Coquille Indian Tribe, centered in southwest Oregon where the Coos River flows into Coos Bay.

Language revitalization, also referred to as language revival or reversing language shift, is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one. Those involved can include linguists, cultural or community groups, or governments. Some argue for a distinction between language revival and language revitalization. There has only been one successful instance of a complete language revival, the Hebrew language, creating a new generation of native speakers without any pre-existing native speakers as a model.

The Siletz were the southernmost of several divisions of the Tillamook people speaking a distinct dialect; the other dialect-divisions were: Salmon River on the Salmon River, Nestucca on Little Nestucca River, Nestucca River and Nestucca Bay, Tillamook Bay on the Tillamook Bay and the mouths of the Kilchis, Wilson, Trask and Tillamook rivers, and Nehalem on Nehalem River. The name "Siletz" comes from the name of the Siletz River on which they live. The origin of the name is unknown

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kalapuya</span> Native American tribe

The Kalapuya are a Native American people, which had eight independent groups speaking three mutually intelligible dialects. The Kalapuya tribes' traditional homelands were the Willamette Valley of present-day western Oregon in the United States, an area bounded by the Cascade Range to the east, the Oregon Coast Range at the west, the Columbia River at the north, to the Calapooya Mountains of the Umpqua River at the south.

The Alsea are a Native American tribe of Western Oregon. They are, confederated with other Tribes on the Siletz Reservation, Oregon, and are members of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Language death</span> Process in which a language eventually loses its last native speaker

In linguistics, language death occurs when a language loses its last native speaker. By extension, language extinction is when the language is no longer known, including by second-language speakers, when it becomes known as an extinct language. A related term is linguicide, the death of a language from natural or political causes, and, rarely, glottophagy, the absorption or replacement of a minor language by a major language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kalapuyan languages</span> Language family

Kalapuyan is a small extinct language family that was spoken in the Willamette Valley of Western Oregon, United States. It consists of three languages.

An indigenous language, or autochthonous language, is a language that is native to a region and spoken by its indigenous peoples. Indigenous languages are not necessarily national languages but they can be; for example, Aymara is both an indigenous language and an official language of Bolivia. Also, national languages are not necessarily indigenous to the country.

The Tolowa language is a member of the Pacific Coast subgroup of the Athabaskan language family. Together with three other closely related languages it forms a distinctive Oregon Athabaskan cluster within the subgroup.

The Tolowa people or Taa-laa-wa Dee-ni’ are a Native American people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethno-linguistic group. Two rancherías still reside in their traditional territory in northwestern California. Those removed to the Siletz Reservation in Oregon are located there.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Languages of Afghanistan</span>

Afghanistan is a linguistically diverse nation, with upwards of 40 distinct languages. However, Dari and Pashto are two of the most prominent languages in the country, and have shared official status under various governments of Afghanistan. Dari, as a shared language between multiple ethnic groups in the country, has served as a historical lingua franca between different linguistic groups in the region and is the most widely understood language in the country. Pashto is also widely spoken in the region; but the language does not have a diverse multi-ethnic population like Dari, and the language is not as commonly spoken by non-Pashtuns. Dari and Pashto are also "relatives", as both are Iranian languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs</span> Indian tribe in Oregon, United States

The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs is a recognized Native American tribe made of three tribes who put together a confederation. They live on and govern the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of Oregon.

A speech corpus is a database of speech audio files and text transcriptions. In speech technology, speech corpora are used, among other things, to create acoustic models. In linguistics, spoken corpora are used to do research into phonetic, conversation analysis, dialectology and other fields.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aimol language</span> Sino-Tibetan language spoken in India

Aimol, also known as Aimual, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by the Aimol people of Manipur, India. It is considered endangered and has less than 9,000 speakers worldwide as per 2011 census. The speakers of this language use Meitei language as their second language (L2) according to the Ethnologue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aikuma</span> Speech recording collection app

Aikuma is an Android app for collecting speech recordings with time-aligned translations. The app includes a text-free interface for consecutive interpretation, designed for users who are not literate. The Aikuma won Grand Prize in the Open Source Software World Challenge (2013).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lingua Libre</span> Wikimedia project for pronunciation

Lingua Libre is an online collaborative project and tool by the Wikimédia France association, which aims to build a collaborative, multilingual, audiovisual speech corpus under a free license.

References

  1. "Foundation for Endangered Languages" . Retrieved 2007-06-10.
  2. "Empowering Communities To Teach, Learn & Sustain Their Languages". 7000 Languages. Retrieved 2022-10-10.
  3. Oregonian/OregonLive, Special to The (2022-03-06). "The quest to save Oregon's Kalapuya: 'You lose a language, you lose a culture'". oregonlive. Retrieved 2022-10-11.
  4. 1 2 3 "Language Preservation: UNESCO-CI" . Retrieved 2007-06-10.
  5. "Ethnologue: Languages of the World" . Retrieved 2007-06-10.
  6. Interview with Karl von Habsburg (German) in RP-Online, 18 October 2018.
  7. Translations, Alpha Omega (2015-05-26). "What Causes the Death of a Language?". Alpha Omega Translations. Retrieved 2022-10-11.
  8. "Why There's A Language Learning Gap In The United States". www.wbur.org. Retrieved 2022-10-11.
  9. Ginsburgh, Victor; Weber, Shlomo (2020-06-01). "The Economics of Language". Journal of Economic Literature. 58 (2): 348–404. doi:10.1257/jel.20191316. ISSN   0022-0515. S2CID   158128153.
  10. "VeriSign Announces Plan to Further Enhance .com and .net Global Internet Constellation Sites with Regional Resolution Servers" . Retrieved 2007-02-06.
  11. "ANA Reference Guide for Establishing Archives and Repositories" (PDF). Retrieved 2010-12-07.
  12. Oregonian/OregonLive, Special to The (2022-03-06). "The quest to save Oregon's Kalapuya: 'You lose a language, you lose a culture'". oregonlive. Retrieved 2022-10-11.

Further reading