Due by 5pm on Sunday, March 22: Discussion Post #8 on the Ning
How do languages go extinct? Respond to the readings, and reflect on what happens when a language dies? How can linguists help preserve a language? Can a ‘dead’ language ever be brought back to life? What efforts are currently underway to document linguistic diversity?
Replies
As a biology major, learning about extinction was not a new concept to me however, reading about how a language dies was a bit more abstract than when an organism goes extinct. A language may be considered extinct when it no longer has any speakers. All of the speakers of a certain language may be deceased and no speakers exist anymore to maintain and pass on the language making it extinct. A language may also go extinct when it is overtaken or pushed out by another more dominant language. This process can occur as a result of cultural assimilation which leads to language shift or replacement. Essentially, the native language of a speech community is replaced by another language that typically is a bridge language between different communities gradually over a period of time. In some cases, the native language of a community becomes extinct by being forced out like some Native American languages that were pushed out by colonizers and replaced by other languages like Spanish, French, and English.
This is the case for many local native languages like Siletz Dee-ni. It is sad to see there are about only five native speakers left but these five speakers are the key to saving the language. People who care about preserving a language can make very large strides just as Bud Lane did when he recorded almost 10,000 audio entries into his seven-year online Siletz Dee-ni Talking Dictionary. I found it interesting the article also mentioned the Navajo language that is in the Athabascan family of languages like Siletz Dee-ni. I read a book in middle school called Code Talker based on true events where Navajo was used as a secret code to communicate during World War 2. Perhaps, this is another reason why it is important to preserve these languages because they are so unique and useful. Seeing the culture preserved along with the language is also inspiring and how it should be as culture and language are so closely tied. Siletz Dee-ni’s rise is very promising and it is wonderful to see schools starting to teach it and allowing other Oregon schools to offer it as a foreign language option.
Watching the “When Languages Die” video featuring K. David Harrison provided great insight into what it is like to actually try and document these languages. One of the difficulties with a dying or endangered language is that most of the remaining speakers are elderly and it was very difficult for them to communicate as seen in the video. I’ve done psychology research with nonagenarians and centenarians and know how hard it can be to interview elderly individuals and those interviews were conducted in English. This goes to show how much perseverance a linguist must have and how difficult the work of a linguist can be. It was also pretty eye-opening to hear that about 80% of the world speaks the major languages (about 84 languages). Hearing about the “science bias” and the number of plants and animals we don’t know about was pretty shocking too. This really highlights how much we don’t know and how much there is to be learned about culture and language still too.
Languages may be preserved through various methods and by the combined efforts of ordinary people, linguists, anthropologists, and others. One obvious way to help preserve a language is to teach it to young generations growing up who can then pass on this language to future generations however, this option is not always feasible. In modern society, linguists have access to technology where they can archive a language and keep recordings as Bud Lane did with his online Siletz Dee-ni Talking Dictionary. Documenting and archiving as much of a language as possible is one way to preserve a language that can be referenced even if there are no living speakers. Recordings, videos, online systems are all possible methods to document a language. Written documents and texts are also possible ways to record a language but these physical documents are susceptible to being lost or destroyed. Even with these documented resources, it is essential to have at least one individual who is very knowledgeable in the language and able to teach the language to others to help preserve it. Ideally, there is at least one community of people who speak that language who can help preserve the language. Linguists may help preserve or visit these communities to interview the community members and collect recordings. As the linguist K. David Harrison highlights in "When Language Dies," outsiders are the ones who need to document the language in an archive and the native speakers provide these outsiders with the information and insider knowledge.
It is important to note the distinction between an extinct and a dead language. A dead language is a language that is no longer the native language of any community but it still may be in use. The most famous example of a dead language is Latin. While Latin is no longer spoken it is commonly taught in schools and is a major part of the field of Classic studies. A dead language may be brought back to life. Hebrew was successfully revived as a spoken language after almost two millennia after it stopped being spoken. This revival was extremely successful and Hebrew is currently the primary spoken language of Israel. The Cornish language also saw a revival. Other languages like Welsch and Hawaiin are also seeing revival movements and efforts to increase the number of speakers.
Linguists and other groups are frightened by the rapid loss and endangerment of many languages and there are efforts in place to help document these languages while they can. I also read about The Endangered Languages Project, which was developed by Google and is run by the First Peoples’ Cultural Council. The project provides an online platform for people all over the world to access and submit information from endangered languages. There are also conferences and research conducted on languages to help preserve their diversity, namely the Linguistic Society of America hosts events for language awareness. Language preservation must also become the goal of younger generations, more specifically recruiting high school-aged students as mentioned by K. David Harrison. I know my Spanish, French, and German classes in high school were some of my favorite and I would have loved to learn more about linguistics then. While languages do go extinct, one piece of hope is that other new languages form too (even fictional ones like Dothraki or Klingon)!
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinct_language
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/04/15/dying_languages_scientists_fret_as_one_disappears_every_14_days.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_preservation
https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/endangered-languages
Languages go extinct when there are no longer any native speakers. In the Youtube video “When Language Dies”, K. David Harrison talks about how there are over 7000 languages and how most people don’t know that since 80% of people speak the major languages. It is said that half of the remaining languages could go instinct in this century. The hardest part of when some of the languages do go extinct is that many languages have been oral languages. Therefore they have never been written down and recorded. Further in many dying languages, the remaining speakers are elderly and the last speakers of the language. Another reason that languages become extinct is when a community is under pressure to integrate with a larger more powerful group. This is seen in the news article about the Siletz language where government boarding schools aimed to stamp out native ways and tongues.
Although the major languages dominate global media, the other 6000 something are also incredibly rich in what they have to say about history, science, or mythology. This is often not thought about when we try to ignore uncommon languages. This is scary because most of them are never written down or recorded in a database so we can’t find them in a library. The information is just in people’s memory so it is very fragile. In the video, the linguist K. David Harrison sheds light on an analogy of how Notre-Dame and moments are universality recognized as treasures so if someone were to smash or get rid of a whole bunch, people would be upset. However, language is a much older moment to human genius so theres a real sense of loss, especially with a smaller community the faces great challenges and prejudice. I never thought of it in this way, nor did I really know much about the extinction or existence of so many languages. To be completely honest, this whole problem was quite invisible to me before this.
Further, these small communities of people are the only ones that can save the language but they need support from outside. Linguists help by interviewing, recording, and documenting languages. In the video, he says how “the linguists is the person who can go into a community and can really penetrate the language and absorb it and understand it on its own terms.” He talks about how there are techniques for going in and documenting at least some portion of the language even when you have no common language. Although they can’t be as sophisticated as when you do have a common language, you can start out by simply pointing to things and there. However, he also talks about the pitfalls in this because a pointing gesture is not culturally common everywhere so in some culture, if we go in and say what's that, we could get the word for finger instead of the word for tree because they don't use a finger pointing gesture and so this is not understood. Therefore he mentions a technique called contact language.
There is such a huge realm of languages that we have yet to appreciate which are disappearing very quickly. I thought it was so cool how in the video when he talked about the 80% of plants and animals we haven’t discovered/ taxonomized with our system of science. However, many indigenous people know plants and animals. Specifically how they fit into their holistic system so there is an immense body of scientific language out there we also lose.
A dead language can be revived from extension ie. Hebrew. Hebrew was revived by Zionists but it wasn’t exactly a dead language people say since it remained the liturgical language of of Judaism through the medical era but it was dead in terms of being use din everyday life. However I did read that Cornish is a language that did completely die out but was revived.
There have been many projects to save some of the disappearing languages such as the endangered languages project. They put “technology at the service of the organizations and individuals working to confront the language endangerment by documenting, preserving and teaching them.” Further linguists play a huge role in going out into the communities and gaining the trust of the people to absorb and understand by interviewing, recording, and documenting languages. In the video, he talk about how recruiting people at the high school age is best because most people in college don’t know anything about linguistics. I definitely would attest to that because I was clueless about it so I didn’t even think about exploring it. I wish now that I did in fact take more courses and learn more about this field. It is so fascinating and language is such a unique tool.
References:
https://qz.com/969597/hebrew-was-the-only-language-ever-to-be-reviv...
https://www.quora.com/Can-dead-languages-or-about-to-die-languages-...
http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/about/
When a language goes extinct, the causes of such happenings occur as a result of two situations. First, all the speakers of the said language have died and, especially with solely oral languages, the effect of losing all native speakers will result in the extinction of a language. Another cause for extinction is if another language, one that is more dominant and globally recognized, emerges into society. It is from here that the "superior" language becomes practiced and the original native language is not taught to the same degree, or even at all, to younger generations, and thus, the language is lost with time. When a language goes extinct, it is an extremely heart-wrenching event as a large aspect of the affiliated culture also perishes incongruity. Individuals within the affiliated culture lose can lose ties to their history, and the overall population is deprived of the perspective, visions, ideas, and knowledge accumulated in said culture. However, there are ways to preserve the language and that is through dual intervention. Both the speakers of the endangered language, as well as those who are anthropologists, linguists, and even just an average person, must make an effort to acknowledge, and preserve the language. The youtube video, "When Language Dies" describes that "outsiders" must help establish, strengthen, and preserve archives with the language information, while the natives are the ones who actually provide the information on the language. When the population of speakers is so small, efforts need to be made to expand the care for the endangered language, thus involving populations and individuals that may not native to said language/culture. Now, if a language, unfortunately, does become extinct, that does not mean that it is gone forever. There are instances, such as with Hebrew, of the revitalization of the language, even after an opposed extinction. With the development of the internet, computers, phones, and other software, linguistic diversity can be preserved in an entirely, more efficient manner. By providing dictionaries of these endangered languages online, outside, non-native members of the endangered language can learn said language and promote the awareness of the language's endangerment while also adding an additional speaker to the diminishing population.