Language Endangerment, Death, and Revival hif 3620 Representations & Self-Representations



Yüklə 83,5 Kb.
tarix30.10.2018
ölçüsü83,5 Kb.
#76655


Language Endangerment, Death, and Revival

  • HIF 3620

  • Representations & Self-Representations

  • Laura A. Janda


Overview

  • Scale of language loss

  • Factors of endangerment

  • Intervention before it’s too late

  • Promoting embedded languages

  • The most important ingredient for success



Scale of language loss (Ethnologue)

  • Number of languages: 6912

  • 347 (~5%) languages have >1M speakers = 94% of world population

  • Remaining 95% of languages spoken by 6% of world population

  • Of these 95%:

    • 497 (~7%) languages “nearly extinct” (<50 speakers)
    • Most of remaining languages endangered (exact level of endangerment hard to determine)
  • Median size of a language in the world: ~3000 speakers



North America as an example (www.indigenous-language.org)

  • Before European invasion:

    • 20M Native Americans, 300 languages
  • Today:

    • 2M Native Americans, 175 languages
    • Of these 175 languages


Australia as an example

  • Before European invasion:

    • 1M Indigenous Australians, 500 languages
  • Today:



Scale of language loss – What does this mean?

  • About 90% of human knowledge encoded in languages is:

    • The property of indigenous peoples
    • On the verge of being lost
  • Erosion of human knowledge is proceeding at an unprecedented pace, erasing indigenous identities and societies



Factors of endangerment

  • Pressures exerted by matrix languages

  • Lack of orthography, standardization, literary tradition

  • Dialectal fragmentation

  • Domain loss

  • Personal choices, largely made by people <5 years old



Timely intervention

  • Speech communities don’t decide to get rid of their own languages

  • Individuals (usually children) decide not to use them

  • By the time the speech community notices the effect of these personal decisions, it is usually too late to save the language

  • Linguists are discouraged from working on “small” or “isolated” languages



Promoting embedded languages

  • Assess level of endangerment

  • Connect with groups that are

    • Local, national, international
    • Political, social, business
  • Target types of pressure exerted by matrix languages

  • Develop specific strategies (suggestions in next presentation)



What is the most important ingredient?

  • Hint: It’s not money, or size, or power

  • The speech community must WANT to save their language

    • Recognize importance for identity
    • Take ownership of issues
    • Have a vision
  • In the presence of sufficient desire and imagination, anything is possible



Discussion of reading from “Endangered Languages”



Yüklə 83,5 Kb.

Dostları ilə paylaş:




Verilənlər bazası müəlliflik hüququ ilə müdafiə olunur ©genderi.org 2024
rəhbərliyinə müraciət

    Ana səhifə