Half the world's languages under threat: Study
REUTERS [ THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2002 8:00:01 AM ]
PARIS: Half of the 6,000 or so languages spoken in the world are
under threat and a wealth of human knowledge could be lost with them,
according to a new study.
The Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing says
pressures from dominant languages such as English, French, Spanish,
Russian and mainstream Chinese are drowning out minority tongues at
an accelerating pace.
"The dying and disappearance of languages has been going on for
thousands of years as a natural event in human society, but at a slow
rate," says the study, funded by the United Nations cultural agency
UNESCO and due to be published on Thursday.
"However, the past 300 years or so have seen a dramatic increase in
the death or disappearance of languages...leading to a situation
today in which 3,000 or more languages that are still spoken are
endangered, seriously endangered or dying."
The study, updated and expanded from a first edition that appeared in
1996, pinpoints threatened languages in "crisis areas" on a series of
maps on a scale that ranges from "potentially endangered"
to "extinct".
"The loss of any one language means a contraction, reduction and
impoverishment of the sum total of the reservoir of human thought and
knowledge as expressible through language," the study notes.
"To give just a few examples, many highly effective medicinal plants
are known only to people in traditional cultures...
"When their languages and cultures are lost, the knowledge about the
plants and their healing properties is lost too."
The study cites the Americas and Australia as having the worst record
over the past 100 years, with hundreds of Aboriginal languages now
extinct in Australia as a result of harsh assimilation policies that
persisted until around 1970.
But it also lists around 50 languages that are at risk in Europe,
including the Celtic languages of Britain, several of the Saami or
Lappish tongues spoken in Scandinavia and northern Russia and the
varieties of Romani spoken by Gypsies.
In Asia, the study says, the situation for minority languages is
uncertain in many parts of China while in Africa, between 500 and 600
of the 1,400 or so local languages are on the decline, with 250 of
those under immediate threat.
Revival:
The study was edited by the late Professor Stephen Wurm, an
Australian linguist of Hungarian origin who spoke some 50 languages.
Wurm recently died.
The Atlas cites several reasons for the disappearance of languages,
ranging from repressive government policies and assimilation to
economic pressures, migratory trends, disease and natural disasters.
While sounding the alarm, it notes that a determined multilingual
approach can rescue even the most threatened tongues.
In Japan, only eight elderly people spoke Ainu on Hokkaido Island by
the late 1980s after decades of official neglect, but promotional
policies have since revived the language.
The publication of the study on Thursday was timed to coincide with
UNESCO's International Mother Language Day, an occasion for the
agency to promote linguistic diversity.
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