the disappearance of languages 语言的消失 阅读

Four Things That Happen When a Language Dies

This World Mother Language Day, read about why many say we should be fighting to

preserve linguistic diversity

Languages around the world are dying, and dying fast. Today is

International Mother

Language Day,

started by UNESCO to promote the world's linguistic diversity.

The grimmest predictions have 90 percent of the world's languages dying out by the end of

this century. Although this might not seem important in the day-to-day life of an English speaker

with no personal ties to the culture in which they’re spoken, language loss matters. Here’s what we

all lose:

1.

We lose “The expression of a unique vision of what it means to be human”

The effects of that language loss could be “culturally devastating,” Basu wrote. “Each language is

a key that can unlock local knowledge about medicinal secrets, ecological wisdom, weather and

climate patterns, spiritual attitudes and artistic and mythological histories.”

Languages have naturally risen and fallen in prominence throughout history, she wrote. What

makes this di

fferent in India as well as throughout the world is the rate at which it’s happening and

the number of languages disappearing.

2.

We lose memory of the planet’s many histories and cultures.

The official language of Greenland, wrote Kate Yoder for Grist, is fascinating and uniqu

e. It’s

“made up of extremely long words that can be customized to any occasion,” she writes. And there

are as many of those words as there are sentences in English, one linguist who specializes in

Greenlandic told her. Some of those, like words for different kinds of wind, are disappearing

before linguists get the chance to explore them. And that disappearance has broader implications

for the understanding of how humans process language, linguist Lenore Grenoble told Yoder.

“There’s a lot we don’t know about how it works, or how the mind works when it does this,” she

said.

Yoder’s article dealt with the effect of climate change on language loss. In sum: it hastens

language loss as people migrate to more central, “safe” ground when their own land is threaten

ed

by intense storms, sea level rise, drought and other things caused by climate change. “When

people settle in a new place, they begin a new life, complete with new surroundings, new

traditions, and, yes, a new language,” she wrote.

3. We lose some of the best local resources for combating environmental threats

As Nancy Rivenburgh wrote

for the International Association of Conference Interpreters, what’s

happening with today’s language loss is actually quite different from anything that happened

before. Lan

guages in the past disappeared and were born anew, she writes, but “they did so in a

state of what linguists call ‘linguistic equilibrium.’ In the last 500 years, however, the equilibrium

that characterized much of human history is now gone. And the world’

s dominant languages

—

or

what are often called ‘metropolitan’ languages—

are all now rapidly expanding at the expense

of

‘peripheral’ indigenous languages. Those peripheral languages are not being replaced.”

That means that out of the around 7000 languages that most reputable sources estimate are spoken

globally, only the top 100 are widely spoken. And it isn’t just our understanding of the human

mind that’s impaired, she writes. In many places, indigenous languages and their speakers are rich

sources of information about the world around them and the plants and animals in the area where

they live. In a time of mass extinction, that knowledge is especially precious.

“Medical science loses potential cures,” she writes. “Resource planners and national government

s

lose accumulated wisdom regarding the management of marine and land resources in fragile

ecosystems.”

4. Some people lose their mother tongue.

The real tragedy of all this might just be all of the people who find themselves unable to speak

their first language, the language they learned how to describe the world in. Some find themselves

in the unenviable position of being one of the few (or the only) speakers of their mother tongue.

And some, like many of Canada’s indigenous peoples, find their language in grave danger

as the

result of a campaign by government to stamp out their cultures.

This loss is something beyond all the other losses, linguist John Lipski told Lisa Duchene for Penn

State News: “Imagine being told you can’t use your language and you’ll see what that undefinable

‘more’ is,” he said.

What can you do about all this? Educate yourself, to start with. The Smithsonian's

annual Mother Tongue Film Festival takes place every February in Washington, D.C. And projects

like National Geographic's

languages and their many speakers, and UNESCO's own website is another resource.

There's still

hope for some of these languages if we pay attention.

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