Causes and Consequences of the Notion of Language Death - Coursework Example

Language death Introduction According to Crystal, “speech is the primary manifestation of language, in all cultures Crystal, 2006, p. 12 /, however the scholar also recognizes the manifestation of language through writing and signing as well. The other category – body language, is not regarded by Crystal as a language proper due to the limited number of possible meanings and simple structure, however, it can be considered as supportive means of communication. Crystal also discusses the topic of the language change stating that “languages do not get better or worse when they change” and the task of the linguist is to study this language change / Crystal, 2006, p. 26 /. Chapter 1 Number of languages in the world and linguistic diversity The question of the actual number of languages in the world is one of the most debatable in the sphere of contemporary linguistics. The problem is that there is no unique definition of the language and therefore the number of languages varies from 4,000 languages to 6,000. Let’s have a look at the number of languages in different places of the world: in Africa exist 1,900 languages, thus, Nigeria alone is the home for 400 languages and language varieties. The inhabitants of both Americas speak over 900 languages, which also include native American languages, spoken primarily in Central and South America. One of the record-holders according to the number of languages is Papua-New Guinea, which has as much as 850 languages, Indonesia has 670, India 380 and Australia – 250 / Shetter, 2000/. This is the table, showing the difference between the sizes of languages in different parts of the world. World area Languages Speakers Number Percent Number Percent Median Mean Africa 2,092 30.3% 675,887,158 11.8% 25,391 323,082 Americas 1,002 14.5% 47,559,38 10.8% 2,000 47,464 Asia 2,269 32.8% 3,489,897,147 61. 0% 10,171 1,538,077 Europe 239 3.5% 1,504,393,183 26.3% 220,000 6,294,532 Pacific 1,310 19.0% 6,124,341 0.1% 800 4,675 Totals 6,912 100.0% 5,723,861,210 100.0% 7,000 828,105 Source: Ethnologue, 15th ed. /World Languages, 2007/ Languages may vary according to the number of their speakers – from hundreds of millions of speakers around the globe speaking English or Spanish or Chinese, till a few thousand or even hundred speakers of some Aboriginal languages. Some languages are spoken only by a small group of people – a dozen or ever less. These languages gradually go down disappear / Shetter, 2000/. Numerous researches were made to study the number of language and forecast their future development and it was proven that by the end of the 21st century the number of spoken languages of the world will reduce by 50 % or even 90 % / Krauss, 1992 /. The loss of linguistic diversity is quite an urgent problem and it can be treated. However, I will turn back to this question a bit later. Now I’d like to explain the process of the language death, its stages and characteristics. Krauss considers that now from 20 % to 40 % of languages are already dead and only 5 % to 10 % can be considered as “safe” meaning widely spoken and/or having the status of official languages /Ostler, 2000 /. Chapter 2 Healthy language and language death There are several definitions of the healthy language. I’d agree with the one, which states that a language is healthy in case it receives new speakers, i.e. is learned by children. In the other cases the language is doomed for extinction / Ostler, 2000/. 2.1. Stages of language death There are several types of the language death: gradual death, bottom-to-top language death, radical language death, linguicide. The last term defines the type of the language death due to some disasters and includes sudden language death, language death caused by genocide, physical and biological language deaths / Dressler & Wodak-Leodolter, 1977/. The ways, in which languages die, are also different; however, the most typical way is the death due to the bilingualism. In happens when people acquire the second language, gradually become bilingual and finally stop speaking their first language. This process can be either natural or forced /Crystal, 2000 /. Sometimes, a language that still has a few language speakers can be recognized as dead. This usually happens in case there are several elderly speakers but the language is not used in communicative purposes any more. When a language comes to this reduced stage of use it is called moribund / Crystal, 2000/. The other process, which should be mentioned in this chapter, is attrition, which implies the process of the cessation of intergenerational transmission of a mother tongue, which can be either a sudden event (although this happens very rarely) or a slow process, when a language is spoken by lesser and lesser people and gradually reduces to the sphere of traditions, song and poetry. For example, this happened to the Manx language, however, Manx, Cornish and some other languages of the UK and Europe were reintroduced in schools and in bilingual publications, which led to partial revival of the languages /Fischman, 1991/. We should also differentiate between language death and pseudoextinction, with the latter being a normal process of language development, when due to gradual changes a language acquires another form and the old form is not used any longer. This happened to Old English, which although being dead language in one sense of the word practically gave birth to Modern English. The other manifestation of this process is the split of a mother language into several daughter languages, like in case of Latin, which gradually developed into a huge family of Romance languages. However, it should be mentioned that the last example is a highly disputable question with many supporters and opponents /Aitchinson, 1991 /. 2.2 Endangered language The simplest definition of the endangered language is a language quite a small number of speakers, which leads to the danger of death and if such a language loses its native speakers it’s considered extinct / Robins & Uhlenbeck, 1991/. Endangered languages are quite difficult to identify. This may be a small number of speakers, their mean age and small percentage of the youngest generation, who speak the language fluently and uses it as a means of communication. This definition is quite schematic and not always can be applied to the real-life situation. Thus some languages of Indonesia can be considered endangered, although they have tens of thousands of speakers but with no children learning and using them. On the other hand, a language with only a hundred of speakers can be considered as a living language, when it is widely used by some small community as a primary language / Robins & Uhlenbeck, 1991/. These and other comparative characteristics lead to the great debate over a number of endangered languages. There are also debates whether the process of the language extinction is positive or negative. The supporters of this process say that that less is the number of languages the better and easier is the communication among the people, the lesser are expenses (on translators in particular). However, their opponents claim that in the contemporary age of the globalization and unification language diversity is but one of not numerous ways of preserving ones cultural diversity / Harrison, 2007/. It is true that every particular language is a soul of the nation or community speaking in it. It an imprint of the unique outlook and culture, it is a reflection of the way of life of community, the way in which it deals with the outer world, the way it thinks, perceives, feels. Thus, we can say that a language is the main means of transaction of cultural heritage of a community and its disappearance implies the loss of the unique viewpoint and outlook of the whole nation and the loss of the nation’s self-identity / Atlas, 2007/. UNESCO launched a new program - the “Atlas on-line”, which has the following aims: • Preservation of the endangered languages for the sake of saving world’s linguistic and cultural diversity; • Providing information about endangered languages in WWW; • Rising public awareness about endangered languages through the establishment of an interactive on-line space; • Promotion of cooperation among local, regional, national and international organizations for the sake of preservation of the endangered languages / Atlas, 2007/. According to the UNESCO definition a language is considered endangered if it is not learned by children, or at least by some part of children of a definite community (30 % minimum). However, under the same definition a language can be regarded as endangered even with considerable children speakers in some situations: • Purposeful and forceful division and transplanting of the speech community of a definite language into communities that use another language; • Constant direct contact between a speech community with a more aggressive cultural community, which uses another for the most part metropolitan language; • Situations, created by a dominant community, leading to the demolition of the living and speaking environment of the weaker community; • Natural disasters like volcanic eruptions, floods, wildfires, devastating diseases, which lead to disappearance of language / Atlas, 2007/. 2.3. Extinct language Once an endangered language is not revived it becomes extinct, which can be defined as a language with no native speakers. Usually this process occurs in cases of directly replacement of a language by another one, like it happened in case of the substitution of the Coptic language by Arabic or Native American languages with European (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese) / Gordon, 2005/. Extinction also takes place in case of the rapid evolution or assimilation of the language and its development in the new different language. However, as I already mentioned the last example is highly disputed by researchers. Such disputable languages are Latin, which can be considered as an extinct language, but it gave birth to the Romance languages, Sanskrit, which is also not spoken any more (but for Mathoor village), but is recognized as a parent of the Indo-Aryan languages, Old English, which is a mother language for Modern English / Adelaar & Muysken, 2004/. Quite often extinct languages are preserved and used for scientific, educational, legal, or ecclesiastical functions, as in case of Sanskrit, Latin, Old Church Slavonic, Avestan, Coptic, Old Tibetan and Ge’ez /Harrison, 2007/. Chapter 3 Reviving endangered languages 3.1. Means of language revival There are also languages, which were considered endangered or even extinct but were given the “second life”. This is done through the policy of reviving of endangered or extinct languages. In this policy two main steps could be differentiated: documentation and revitalization /Harrison, 2007/. The first step - language documentation implied the process of documentation of the grammar, lexicon, and oral traditions of the language. The second step - language revitalization involves increase of the native speakers of the language through political, community, and educational policies of a definite community. This proves can also be called as language revival or reversing language shift /Harrison, 2007/. One more interesting fact about language revival: prevention of language death often implies promotion of bi- or multilingualism, which enable speakers of endangered languages to learn a language of the more powerful community. Thus, people can use dominant language in some spheres of the social life, while preserving their native language for the other spheres, mainly for the everyday communication. On the other hand, it should be mentioned that the vast majority of countries consider bi- and multilingualism to be a disadvantage rather than advantage, believing that monolingualism is a normal state of affairs and more suitable and convenient way of communication / Atlas, 2007/. Having realised the difficult and ever dangerous situation of numerous languages of the world, UNESCO launched a project –“Atlas on-line”- aiming to protect and preserve endangered languages. The first stage of the project dwelt purely on endangered and moribund African languages, which were an UN-wide priority, due to the most limited information on these languages and the most rapid rates of disappearance. Thus, among 1400 African languages 250 are endangered and 500 to 600 moribund. However, the project was lately reconsidered and now it also contains information about other parts of the world / Atlas, 2007 /. 3.2. Literacy Planning Language survival is possible, when certain conditions are created: transmission of a native language from one generation to the succeeding, preservation of all main communicative functions of the language, creating conditions, when diglossia is impossible in order to eliminate the risk of the influence of the more powerful language on the less powerful one, stable and vital speech community and language maintenance / Serafín, 2001/. We can observe such purposeful and conscious actions of a community to preserve their language in bilingual or multilingual parts or within immigrant groups / Serafín, 2001/. One of the possible ways to promote language revival and enforcement is literacy development. It is clear that for a language to continue to operate within definite society written form is a must. In the contemporary society, literacy is a must for social and economic mobility. Literacy acquires different meanings for different social groups and different situations. Thus, literacy needed for daily life in an agricultural community is not so elaborated as literacy of industrial community. In order to list all these social, class-based and economic factors a literacy plan is created and established / Serafín, 2001/. There are quite many definitions of the language planning each of which reveals its particular aspect. Thus Haugen defines language planning as “the normative work of language academies and committees, all forms of what is commonly known as language cultivation, and all proposals for language reform or standardization” /Haugen, in Serafín, 2001/. “Language planning is a body of ideas, laws and regulations (language policy), change rules, beliefs, and practices intended to achieve a planned change (or to stop change from happening) in the language use in one or more communities. To put it differently, language planning involves deliberate, although not always overt, future oriented change in systems of language code and/or speaking in a societal context” /Rubin and Jernudd, in Serafín, 2001/. “The organized pursuit of solutions to language problems, usually at the national level” /Fishman 1971 in Serafín, 2001/. “Language planning may be thought of as the management of linguistic innovation” /Karam 1974 in Serafín, 2001/. “Language planning refers to deliberate efforts to influence the behaviour of others with respect to the acquisition, structure [corpus], or functional allocation [status] of their language codes” /Cooper 1989 in Serafín, 2001/. “The commonly-accepted definition of language planning is that it refers to all conscious efforts to affect the structure or function of language varieties…. The commonly-accepted definition of language policy is that it is language planning by governments….language planning-policy means the institutionalization of language as a basis for distinctions among social groups (classes)” /Tollefson 1991 in Serafín, 2001/. Conclusions So, we can come to the conclusion that a language is a main means of communication, which exists mainly in two forms – oral and written. There as much as 6000 languages in the world, however, with each coming day the number of languages reduces and according to different researches by the end of the century from 50 % to 90 % of languages will disappear. In the process of the language disappearing, known also as language death or language extinction, language undergoes several stages, which are opposed to each other in their characteristics: living language, endangered language, extinct language. Due to the well-considered and balanced policy language can be preserved or even dead language can be revived. 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