Q2e Reading & Writing 5: Audio Script Unit 1

Unit 1: Linguistics
The Q Classroom
Activity B., Page 3
Teacher: Today we are beginning with Unit 1. Every unit in Q starts with a question. As we go through
the unit, we will continue to discuss this question. Our answers may change as we explore the topic.
“What happens when a language disappears?” First, what makes a language disappear? How does it
happen?
Felix: Some languages aren’t spoken by very many people, like tribal languages. In recent times, I think
what happens is that modern governments take over and establish a national language, and the small
groups of people that spoke the old language break up and get absorbed into the mainstream.
Teacher: And what are the effects of that?
Felix: Lots of times the old languages leave traces in the modern language. There are always some words
that have their origin in an old language.
Teacher: That’s true. English has a lot of words from Latin, which of course no one speaks as a native
language today, and it also has words from an Anglo‐Saxon language that has disappeared. What would
you say to this question, Yuna? What happens when a language disappears?
Yuna: It’s very sad. It means a whole culture is gone. Lost.
Sophy: I don’t think anything can really disappear anymore. Everything is recorded. A language may not
have many speakers, but there will at least be a record of it if someone wants to study it.
Teacher: How about you, Marcus? What would you say happens when a language disappears?
Marcus: I agree with Yuna that it’s sad. Language isn’t just words—it’s an important part of culture.
People will fight if you try to take their language away. They’ll try to keep it alive. I think schooling is the
key. If the children speak the language, it will live.
Teacher: Interesting points, everyone. We’ll revisit this question at the end of the unit and see if we
have any ideas to add to our discussion.

Reading 1 History of the Maori Language

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Decline and revival century, more than 130,000 people of Maori

In the last 200 years, the history of the Maori ethnicity could speak and understand Maori,
language (te reo Maori) has been one of ups one of the three official languages of New
and downs. At the beginning of the 19th Zealand.
century, it was the predominant language Maori: A common means of communication
spoken in Aotearoa (the Maori name for New For the first half century or so of the European
Zealand). As more English speakers arrived in settlement of New Zealand, the Maori language
New Zealand, the Maori language was was a common way of communicating. Early
increasingly confined to Maori communities. By settlers had to learn to speak the language if
the mid-20th century, there were concerns that they wished to trade with Maori because
the language was dying out. Major initiatives settlers were dependent on Maori for many
launched from the 1980s have brought about a things at this time.
revival of the Maori language. In the early 21st

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Q2e Reading & Writing 5: Audio Script Unit 1

Up to the 1870s, it was not unusual for Maori was the language of the marae. Political
government officials, missionaries, and meetings were conducted in Maori, and there
prominent Pakeha to speak Maori. Their were Maori newspapers and literature. More
children often grew up with Maori children and importantly, it was the language of the home,
were among the most fluent European speakers and parents could pass on the language to their
and writers of Maori. Particularly in rural areas, children.
the interaction between Maori and Pakeha was The lure of the city
constant. The Second World War brought about
Korero Pakeha (“Speak English!”) momentous changes for Maori society. There
Pakeha were in the majority by the early was plenty of work available in towns and cities
1860s, and English became the dominant due to the war, and Maori moved into urban
language of New Zealand. Increasingly, the areas in greater numbers. Before the war,
Maori language was confined to Maori about 75 percent of Maori lived in rural areas.
communities that existed separately from the Two decades later, approximately 60 percent
Pakeha majority. lived in urban centers. 9 English was the
The Maori language was not understood as an language of urban New Zealand—at work, in
essential expression and envelope of Maori school, and in leisure activities. Maori children
culture, important for the Maori in maintaining went to city schools where Maori was unheard
their pride and identity as a people. Maori was of in teaching programs. The new, enforced
now officially discouraged. Many Maori contact of large numbers of Maori and Pakeha
themselves questioned its relevance in a caused much strain and stress, and the
Pakeha-dominated world where the most language was one of the things to suffer.
important value seemed to be to get ahead as The number of Maori speakers began to
an individual. decline rapidly. By the 1980s, less than 20
The Maori language was suppressed in percent of Maori knew enough of their
schools, either formally or informally, so that traditional language to be regarded as native
Maori youngsters could assimilate with the speakers. Even for those people, Maori was
wider community. Some older Maori still recall ceasing to be the language of everyday use in
being punished for speaking their language. the home. Some urbanized Maori people
Many Maori parents encouraged their children became divorced from their language and
to learn English and even to turn away from culture. Others maintained contact with their
other aspects of Maori custom. Increasing original communities, returning for important
numbers of Maori people learned English hui (meetings) and tangihanga (funerals) or
because they needed it in the workplace or allowing the kaumatua (elders) at home to
places of recreation such as the football field. adopt or care for their children.
“Korero Pakeha” (Speak English) was seen as Seeds of change
essential for Maori people. From the 1970s, many Maori people
A language lives reasserted their identity as Maori. An emphasis
Despite the emphasis on speaking English, the on the language as an integral part of Maori
Maori language persisted. Until the Second culture was central to this. Maori leaders were
World War most Maori spoke Maori as their increasingly recognizing the dangers of the loss
first language. They worshipped in Maori, and of Maori language. New groups emerged that

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Q2e Reading & Writing 5: Audio Script Unit 1

were committed to strengthening Maori culture Waitangi. The Waitangi Tribunal agreed with
and the language. Major Maori language the Maori and recommended a number of laws
recovery programs began in the 1980s. Many and policies. In 1987, Maori was made an
were targeted at young people and the official language of New Zealand.
education system, such as a system of primary There are now many institutions working to
schooling in a Maori-language environment. recover the language. Even so, the decline of
Legislating for change the Maori language has only just been arrested.
Efforts to secure the survival of the Maori There is a resurgence of Maori, but to survive as
language stepped up in 1985. In that year the a language, it needs enough fluent speakers of
Waitangi Tribunal heard the Te Reo Maori all ages as well as the respect and support of
claim, which asserted that the Maori language the wider English-speaking and multiethnic New
was a taonga (a treasure) that the government Zealand community.
was obliged to protect under the Treaty of

Reading 2 When Languages Die

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What exactly do we stand to lose when existing only in unwritten languages in people’s
languages vanish? It has become a cliché to talk memories. It is only one generation away from
about a cure for cancer that may be found in extinction and always in jeopardy of not being
the Amazon rain forest, perhaps from a passed on. This immense knowledge base
medicinal plant known only to local shamans remains largely unexplored and uncataloged.
(Plotkin 1993). But pharmaceutical companies We can only hope to access it if the people who
have spared no efforts to get at this knowledge, possess and nurture it can be encouraged to
and in many cases, have exploited it to develop continue to do so.
useful drugs. An estimated $85 billion in profits If people feel their knowledge is worth
per year is made on medicines made from keeping, they will keep it. If they are told, or
plants that were first known to indigenous come to believe, that it is useless in the modern
peoples for their healing properties (Posey world, they may well abandon it. Traditional
1990). knowledge is not always easily transferred from
An astonishing 87 percent of the world’s plant small, endangered languages to large, global
and animal species have not yet been identified, ones. How can that be true if any idea is
named, described, or classified by modern expressible in any language? Couldn’t Solomon
science (Hawksworth & Kalin- Arroyo 1995). Islanders talk about the behavior patterns of
Therefore, we need to look to indigenous fish in English just as easily as in Marovo, their
cultures to fill in our vast knowledge gap about native language? I argue that when small
the natural world. But can they retain their communities abandon their languages and
knowledge in the face of global linguistic switch to English or Spanish, there is also
homogenization? massive disruption of the transfer of traditional
Much—if not most—of what we know about knowledge across generations. This arises in
the natural world lies completely outside of part from the way knowledge is packaged in a
science textbooks, libraries, and databases, particular language.

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Q2e Reading & Writing 5: Audio Script Unit 1

Consider Western !Xoon, a small language of patterns of knowledge erosion may be observed
Namibia (the exclamation mark is a click sound). among indigenous peoples all around the world
In !Xoon, clouds are called “rain houses.” By as they undergo a cultural shift away from
learning the word for cloud, a !Xoon-speaking traditional lifestyles and languages.
child automatically gets (for free) the extra
information that clouds contain and are the
source of rain. An English child learning the
word cloud gets no information about rain and
has to learn on her own that rain comes from
clouds.
Languages package and structure knowledge in
particular ways. You cannot merely substitute
labels or names from another language and
hold onto all of the implicit, hidden knowledge
that resides in a taxonomy, or naming system.
Still, each language and indigenous people is
unique, and language shift takes place at
different speeds and under very different
conditions. Can we then predict how much
traditional knowledge will successfully be
transferred and how much will be lost?
Some scientists have tried to do just that. The
Bari language (1,500–2,500 speakers) of
Venezuela was studied by linguists who asked
how much knowledge of the plant world was
being lost and how much retained. The Bari live
in a close relationship with the rain forest and
have learned to use many of its plants for food,
material goods, medicine, and construction of
houses. One scientist found that the loss of Bari
traditional knowledge corresponded with
decreasing use of forest resources and a shift
from the traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle,
along with a shift to speaking Spanish. His
conservative estimate of the rate of knowledge
loss should be a wake-up call to all: “I estimate
that the real loss of ethnobotanical knowledge
from one generation to the next may be on the
order of 40 to 60 percent.” (Lizarralde 2001).
This is a dire scenario: Bari people who have
limited connection with the forest have lost up
to 45 percent of traditional plant names. Similar

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