Language death, maintenance and revival

• people stop speaking a language and start speaking another – language shift

• If every speaker shifts the language is no longer spoken anywhere – language death

Language death

• Very old – languages replaced by Latin and Greek in the Roman Empire, Arabic in West Asia

• Distinction – slow peaceful change as a language changes into another – Latin – French and Italian – Sanskrit – Hindi and Punjabi – Classical Malay – Modern Malay – is not language death

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• Language death – one language is replaced by another

• Death of speakers – Australian Aborigines, Native Tasmanians and Native Caribbeans – mainly by disease

• Most frequently – all speakers shift to other languages – Australia and Americas

Language Suicide

• Gradual replacement by a closely related language

• Decreolisation in the Caribbean

• Maybe Tok Pisin in PNG

Causes of death

• Occasionally by force – boarding school policy for American Indians from 1890s

• Sometimes disease (Tasmania), flood, earthquakes, AIDS in Africa

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• More often cultural and economic – migration to cities, intermarriage, education, conversion to scriptural religions

• Economic rewards for language death – social and cultural penalties for speaking old language

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• Acceleration with rise of modern empires – French, English, Russian -- and migration

• (note also simultaneous rise of new languages, pidgins and creoles and new varieties – New Englishes)

Today

• 6-10,000 world languages – at least half threatened with extinction

• One century or two – only 1-200 languages left?

• Any language with less than 1 million (100?) speakers is in danger of extinction

• Especially Americas, Africa, Australia

Examples

• California – 98 indigenous languages

• Shift to Spanish before 19th C., then English

• 45 -- no fluent speakers

• 17 – 1-5 speakers in 2001

• 36 spoken by old people

• 0 spoken by children

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• World -- at least 400 languages have only elderly speakers

• E.g. Busuu (Cameroon) – 8

• Lipan Apache (US) – 2 or 3

• Wadjigu (Australia) – 1?

• Maybe one died while you were writing

Who are the murderers?

• European languages --English, Spanish, Portuguese

• Regional languages – Hausa, Swahili, Malay

• Other local languages – esp. in Africa

When does a language die?

• Common sense – when the least speaker dies (or penultimate?)

• But Cornish died in 1696 (last monoglot speaker), 1777 (last native speaker), early C19th (last naturalistic learner), 1891 – last student of a native speaker (?) – 1940s Cornish words used for counting fish

Is there a life after death?

• Dead languages may survive as languages of religion – Coptic, some languages of the Roman Empire – prophecies, magic and ceremony -- Manx

• Often provide words for local animals and plants and geography

• E.g. mysterious place names in Britain

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• Khoisan languages in southern Africa – words to Zulu and English – gogga (insect) kudu (antelope)

• North American English – moose and squash (Narragansett), raccoon, pecan hickory (Powhatan), skunk (Abenaki)

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• Australian English – dingo, koala, wallaby (Dharuk) – also boomerang

• Taino (Caribbean) – maize, cassava, yucca

• Arawak (Caribbean) – cannibal

• Words for counting sheep in N. England – Celtic language dead for 1000 years

Consequences

• 2003 UNESCO paper – language death results in the loss of unique biological and ecological knowledge

• Reduces knowledge about human language and mind

• Death of unique cultures

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• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – language determines culture e.g. Hopi – lack of a sense of time

• But criticised

• Close relationship of Australian languages

• Contradicted by Chomsky and UG

Distinctive features of languages

• Hawaian – no consonant clusters – only five vowels

• Khoisan – clicks

Loss of local knowledge

• North Frisian – word for pituitary gland indicated awareness that stress damages the gland

• Amazon -- place names indicate where fish can be found

• Africa – Names for plants indicate medicinal properties

Military value?

• US army – codes in Navaho – also Cherokee (WWI) and Zulu

• Redundant now?

Can dying languages be maintained?

• Serious attempts from mid-20th century in US, Australia, Europe

• Subjects in school, media, education

• Success is limited – economic and cultural factors in North America and Australia

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• Absence of realistic domain except ceremonial and political

• Requires motivation to overcome economic disadvantages

• At best – will be used in formal situations

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• Success requires political support – usually absent with small languages

• Also fairly large population

• Success stories – French in Canada, Welsh, Maori, Hawaian, Catalan, Irish

• Becomes a taught second language

Canada

• Language shift from French to English reversed

• Coercion – signboards – immigrants and minorities required to be taught in French – control of immigration

• Required control of provincial govt.

• Signs that shift is starting again

Ireland

• Shift from Irish to English almost complete by 1920s

• Govt required signs in 2 languages – pass in Irish for govt employment – economic subsidies to Irish speaking areas

• Revival as a taught 2nd language – continued decline as a 1st language

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Language death can be prevented or language death reversed if

• Supporters control local or national govt

• Group is distinct for historical or ethnic reasons

• Language is culturally valued

Is revival possible?

• Can a dead language be revived?

• Maybe Hebrew in Israel? – but exceptional

• Religious and cultural value

• Tradition of language shift

• Rejection of spoken languages

• Continued written and formal use

• Maybe modern Hebrew a new language

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• Dead languages may be studied as a hobby (Cornish), symbol of group identity (Sanskrit) or for religious reasons (Coptic)

• But no (maybe one) examples of real revival

• Language creation is just as pointless.

Problems

• Some dead languages not written

• Some died before they could be recorded (Cornish)

• Even if recorded may be problems – last speaker of Dalmatian had no teeth (dental fricatives?)

• Which variety? – from what period?

Final observation

• New varieties come into existence – Beduin Sign language – pidgins – new dialects – New Englishes

• In time may become languages – laissez-faire policy for language birth as well as language death?