Endangered languages, language

documentation and revitalisation

 2

Linguistic Diversity Quiz

Approximately how many languages are now in use in the
world?
• Around 400?
• Around 1000?
• Around 6000?
• Over 7000?

Answer:
• Latest count by Ethnologue: 7,099 (accessed 26 Nov 2017)
(www.ethnologue.com/statistics)
 3

Which continent is
the most linguistically
Pacific, 19%

Africa, 30%

diverse? Europe, 4%

Americas, 15%
Asia, 32%

Table from http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics

 4

Language endangerment
What proportion of the world’s languages is
likely to disappear during the 21st century?
a. 90% b. 75%
c. 50% d. 10%

Answer:
a: Some linguists (e.g. Krauss 1992) have estimated
that 90% of languages now spoken will die out
before 2100 if current trends continue. BUT
c: According to more widely accepted estimates,
‘only’ 50% will be lost.

This is still of concern to many linguists and

communities!
 5

How many speakers does each language have on average?

a. 100,000 b. 1,000,000
c. 2000 d. 6000
Answer:
d: 6000

What percentage of the world’s languages have less than 1

million native speakers?
a. 10% b. 30%
c. 70% d. 95%
Answer:
d: 95%
Overview

 Global linguistic and cultural diversity

 Threats
 Responses
 Language revitalisation and support
 Models
 Case studies
 Conclusions
 Global language ecology

• The world’s largest 9 languages each have 100+ million speakers

(Mandarin, Spanish, English, Bengali, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian,
Arabic, Japanese) and together have 2.6 billion speakers (40% of world
total)
• largest 20 languages have 3.2 billion speakers (> 50% of world total)
• 4% of world’s languages are spoken by 96% of world’s population, ie.
only 4% of world’s population speaks 96% of world’s languages so there
are many languages that are very small (50% have less than 10,000
speakers, 25% have less than 1,000)
• radical reduction in speaker numbers has been recorded in past 40 years
for indigenous languages across many regions of the world together with
increasing age profiles of remaining speakers — Krauss 1992 “the
coming century will see either the death or the doom of 90% of
mankind’s languages”, less extreme estimate is 50% (only 3,500!)
 Speaker community profiles

 1. intergenerational language transmission

 2. percentage of speakers within total population
(not absolute numbers)
 3. domains and functions of language use
 4. language attitudes and ideology of wider
community
 5. speakers’ attitudes toward their own language
 Typology of languages

• Viable (safe, strong) - spoken by all age groups,

learnt by children, actively supported (can be large or
small populations)
• Endangered - socially and economically
disadvantaged, under heavy pressure from larger
language, spoken by reducing population and could
disappear without community support
• Moribund - languages no longer learnt by children
with few older speakers, little social function
• Extinct - no native speakers
 Should we care?

 1. NO we shouldn’t — fewer languages are better — loss

of languages leads to mutual understanding and more
chance for global peace and would be economically
rational (but: naive and counter-examples, also whose
language will be the chosen one?)
 2. YES, because we need diversity (ecological analogy)
 3. YES, because languages express identity
 4. YES, because languages are repositories of history and
culture
 5. YES, because language contributes to the sum of
human knowledge (each language represents a different
view of the world)
 6. YES, because languages are inherently interesting
 Responses

 Do nothing – benign neglect

 Document languages before they disappear –
collect and analyse data, archive and disseminate
it
 Promote language revitalisation – policy
formation, materials development
 Relate language shift to socioeconomic policies,
politics, environmental pressures, poverty, to
address causes of endangerment
 What can we do?

 work on documentation, protection, and support

(including revitalisation) of global linguistic diversity
in a respectful and collaborative manner
 work with members of language communities
 understand language use patterns and language
attitudes
 provide reliable and comprehensible information
 inform relevant stakeholders, including international
organisations, governments and general public
 Documentation

• collect and analyse linguistic, sociolinguistic and

cultural data, including audio, video and text
materials to create useable corpora
• collect and analyse data on social, cultural and
political environment of the community to
understand language shift processes
• archive these materials and associated metadata
for current and future use
 Endangered Languages Documentation
Programme (ELDP) at SOAS

• funded by Arcadia Trust, based at SOAS, University

of London, distributes £1.5million per year in 4 types
of grants
• 400 teams of researchers around the world
documenting languages and cultures
• Digital archive at SOAS
• Academic programme for training MA, PhD, post-
doctoral researchers, workshops
• Publishing books, newsletter, CD-ROMs, website
 An example – Stuart McGill
 4 year PhD project plus 2 year post-doc at
SOAS
 documentation of Cicipu (Niger-Congo, north-
west Nigeria) in collaboration with native
speaker researchers
 outcomes:
 a corpus of texts (video, ELAN, Toolbox)
 2,000 item dictionary
 archive (956 files, 50Gbytes)
 overview grammar (134 pages)
 analysis of agreement (158 pages)
 website, cassette tapes, books, orthography
proposal and workshop
 Local community education

• help communities to understand the situation of their

language
• provide research training opportunities to members
of the community
• provide language teacher training opportunities for
community members
• support communities to foster the position of the
language
• support the use of the language in a range of
contexts
 Language revitalisation and support
 Language revitalisation: principles and
practices for developing language use and
reversing language shift by increasing
number of speakers and widening domains of
use
 Strengthening threatened languages and
supporting them through development of
places/domains to use them, orthographies,
school curricula, materials, training, and
media
 Models of language revitalisation
 Master-apprentice: mostly used in North America to
pass on moribund indigenous languages
 Language nest: pioneered in Aotearoa (New
Zealand) Maori kohanga reo but extended to
Hawaiian, Saami, Manx etc.
 Immersion schools: teaching language and content
entirely in L2, eg. Welsh
 Bilingual schools: teaching language and content
in L1 and L2, usually transitional
 Language awareness: teaching about L2, some
routines, iconic usages
 Is it a hopeless cause?
 NO, there is evidence that language shift can be
reversed, eg
 Welsh now has increased speakers; because of
education more children now speak Welsh than past 100
years
 Maori, New Zealand - kohanga reo ‘language nests’ have
created new generation of speakers
 Hawaiian - similar model created new speakers
 Manx – language nests and immersion schooling – the
first modern Manx novel written by a graduate
 Etc etc
 A case study -- Maori
 In 1970’s Maori realised that their language
was contracting to use by old people in
restricted contexts, eg. marae
 Introduction of kohanga reo ‘language nests’
 Introduction of education at all levels and
government recognition as co-official
language, development of terminology
 First university-educated students now
emerging, eg. Auckland University of
Technology
New contexts of use

 Maori television
 Facebook
 Twitter
 Conclusions
• There are many challenges facing the world today in
terms of linguistic and cultural diversity, both globally
and locally
• Researchers and communities are responding to the
challenges to understand language use, attitudes,
ideologies and the dynamics of change
• Efforts are going on around the world to document,
revitalise and support threatened languages, and to
extend their domains of use and numbers of
speakers, with indications of increasing success
 Conclusions
You can help in this by:
• understanding and appreciating language diversity

• combating the ideology of monolingualism (which

probably never existed anywhere in the world,
especially the UK), and
• helping to disseminate accurate information about
the state of languages and cultures across the world,
thus supporting communities in their struggles to
maintain and develop them
• doing the MA in LDD & the PhD in Field Linguistics