Talkin' About Talk Date Archives
Can threatened or dying languages be revived?
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There's a difference, of course, between a language that's extinct and one that's threatened. Hittite, once the language of a great empire, is as dead as the sabre-toothed tiger. Many of the world's languages today are like the rare and beautiful whooping cranes--hanging on by the skin of their teeth.
Take Cherokee: in the past three or four decades, the number of children speaking it as a first language has declined so sharply that Cherokee could disappear in just another generation. But here's a scene that provides hope: In a preschool classroom in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, three- and four-year old children are sitting with their teachers on a colorful carpet in a corner of the room, reading together from a picture book. It looks like what preschoolers everywhere do. What's unique in this scene, is that the book they're reading is in Cherokee, and it’s the only language used in the classroom.
If a language is to live, it's critical that the children learn it. The hope is that, by the time these kids reach third grade, they'll be fluent enough in their ancestral tongue to become a new generation of Cherokee speakers. There are similar programs --- from infant day care through high school classes -- among the Mohawk people in New York State and Canada, the Blackfoot in Montana, Arapaho in Wyoming, and other native American communities. It takes a lot of effort, but the programs are succeeding.
In the U.S., the Native American Languages Acts of 1990 and 1992, have put a priority on saving languages that may die if nothing is done to keep them alive. Indigenous languages are being taught in colleges and universities in Arizona, Kansas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Some communities have set up summer language camps for children and adults, or online language courses. Linguists are working to preserve not only native American languages, but others such as Gullah, a creole from Africa, spoken on the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina.
And it's not just in the U.S. Think of Gaelic, which was revitalized in Ireland. Or Hebrew, which was used only for religious purposes until it was revived to become the official language of Israel.
It's taken us a long time to realize the value of sustaining languages, but now it's happening. Within the past twenty years, language revitalization has become an international movement. The United Nations -- through UNESCO -- and multinational companies like Volkswagen have embraced the idea. In Africa, literature on AIDS is being used to teach literacy in African languages. In the Amazon rain forest, Yanomami people are learning about hygiene through literature printed in their tribal language. Teachers in Siberia are being trained by linguists from Russia and the Netherlands to teach local languages to children. And where there are only a few elderly speakers left in a community, young language learners are spending time with them, doing everyday chores in the language so they too can become speakers.
Where there's a population of speakers and a willingness to keep the language alive, people are working to document and describe endangered languages. In places where the languages haven't been spoken for years, they're using archives, oral histories and notes from missionaries, anthropologists, and historians to revive languages, just as Hebrew was revived from the written form. It's a growing effort, and it may be our best hope to stem the loss of languages that are otherwise doomed.
Linguist Ken Hale has compared the loss of a language to "dropping a bomb on a museum," destroying a culture, intellectual wealth, a work of art. It's a sobering thought that most of the languages that ever existed have already gone the way of the sabre-toothed tiger. Which is why we need to care for the ones that are threatened... as if they were whooping cranes.
That's the language thought for today, which comes from linguists Akira Yamamoto, Marcellino Berardo, Tracy Hirata-Edds, Mary Linn, Lizette Peter, and Kimiko Yamamoto at the Universities of Kansas and Oklahoma. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. Visit our website at www.coFc.edu/linguist. In the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do, language makes a difference.
Does anybody here speak Klingon?
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With roughly seven thousand languages already in the world, what possesses people to make up new ones? If the motive is idealistic, to create a single language to unite mankind in mutual understanding, there may be a flaw in that reasoning. Some of the bloodiest conflicts in history have been fought among people who speak the same language. Think of Vietnam or, for that matter, the American civil war!
Another motive seems to be to create an exclusive secret society. Children make up languages all the time to do that.
Then there are languages created for imaginary civilizations. Good examples are the Klingon language in the Star Trek television series, and Tolkien's Elvish language, spoken by citizens of Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings.
Another reason is that thinkers have been frustrated at how imperfectly natural languages represent the world. In the 17th century, there were attempts to create a "logical" language, using symbols -- as in mathematics -- that could be understood regardless of what language the user spoke. But, while the invented languages were logical, they were also complicated, arbitrary, and hard for anyone but the inventor to learn.
The late 19th century saw a great flowering of attempts at a universal language, starting in 1880 with a language called Volapuk. Then came Esperanto, and languages with names like Novial, Interlingua and dozens of others. Almost all of them were based on Western European tongues, usually German, French, English, or Spanish. And most of them… are extinct. Once an invented language is launched onto the stormy seas of language usage it rarely survives the death of its inventor, no matter how clever or systematic it may be.
To me two of the most intriguing made-up languages are based on extraterrestrial or musical ideas. Even though it's fictional, Klingon is known even to non-linguists, and -- like Esperanto -- may be one of the rare languages that does outlive its creator. If you want to learn it, there are things to help, such as a grammar book and audio tapes, a multimedia Klingon tutor, and a dictionary -- in Portuguese and German, as well as English. There are even some international societies that try to keep the language alive. All of this for a made-for-TV invented language of roughly 2,000 words, designed to sound as alien and harsh as possible to capture the nasty nature of the Klingons. Here's a Klingon as Hamlet, pondering whether to be or not to be:
[insert Klingon sample]
The second language reminds me of the film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" in which a haunting series of five tones gets a response from an alien spacecraft. One of the 19th century invented languages was based on tones, the do-re-mi system used to teach singing. It was called Solresol and used the 7 notes of the scale in combinations to create words. For example, fa-fa-do-fa was the word for "doctor," "fa-fa-do-la" was "a dentist." It was relatively easy to learn, and what made the language unique is that it could be sung, played or whistled as well as spoken! It was popular for quite a long time.
There have also been languages created for a scientific purpose, such as Loglan, which was invented in 1960. And one from1962, spelled B-A-B-M but pronounced Bo-A-Bo-Mu, the idea being that each letter represents a syllable. Or one from 1979 that uses a system of icons instead of letters to represent concepts and sounds. The list goes on.
You can find a lot of these language -- including the newest ones -- at www.langmaker.com .Would you like to create your own language, better than the ones we already have? If so, join the club. Among people who like languages, it seems to be a universal urge.
That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from Christopher Moseley, a linguist at the BBC in London. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. Visit us at www. coFc.edu/linguist. And, keep in mind that wherever you are and whatever you do... language makes a difference.
Is language important enough to fight about?
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The idea of fighting over language might seem strange, but it's all too common. Like religion, language can move people to take up arms against those who have a different one. That's because language is such an important part of identity.
We tend to think there's a one-to-one correspondence between language and nation: in France they speak French, in Japan they speak Japanese, and so on. But worldwide there are close to 7,000 languages -- and only about 200 nations. That means a lot of multilingual nations! And since languages tend to coincide with ethnic groups, that means a lot of multi-ethnic nations as well. India and Nigeria, for example, each have about 400 different languages and ethnic groups.
In many parts of the world, people from different language backgrounds interact on a daily basis. On the whole, things go smoothly enough. But sometimes tensions arise -- especially when one group feels threatened or oppressed by another.
Look at Canada, normally a pretty peaceful place -- except when it comes to language. Canada as a whole is officially bilingual, but most French-speaking Canadians live in the province of Quebec. Surrounded by English-speakers, they often feel that their language and culture are threatened.
In 1977, French-speakers in Quebec tried to protect their language by passing a law that in many ways restricted the use of English. For example, it required all signs in public places to be in French, and French alone. Well, it caused a lot of resentment among the English-speakers -- including small business-owners like Allan Singer. For years, he had run his modest shop beneath a simple hand painted sign that read "Allan Singer Limited -- Printers and Stationers." Under the new law, his sign became illegal -- he would have to replace it with a sign in French.
Well, Mr. Singer refused to do that -- and took his case all the way to Canada's Supreme Court. The court ruled that Quebec's law could require a business owner to use French in his sign. But the law could not force him to use French only, to the exclusion of English -- or of Spanish, or Chinese, or any other language that he might also wish to use. Ultimately, this brouhaha over signs gave Canada an opportunity to reaffirm its commitment to protecting the language rights of all its citizens. But the underlying tensions haven't gone away. On two occasions -- in 1980 and 1995 -- the citizens of Quebec even went to the polls to vote on whether the province should secede from Canada, and become an independent French-speaking nation. It didn't happen -- but the 1995 vote was awfully close, with a margin of less than one percent.
Conflicts over language sometimes escalate into riots and even full-scale wars. Language played a major role in the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971. What began as a Bengali language movement turned into a nine-month war for Bengali independence in which more than three million people died.
You've probably seen news reports about Sri Lanka, where language is at the heart of an ongoing conflict. A group called the Tamil Tigers -- speakers of the Tamil language -- have been rebelling for decades against a Sinhalese-speaking majority. And in Spain, the Basque separatist group ETA has used acts of terrorism in pursuing its goal of an independent Basque homeland … where Basque would be the national language.
In these and other conflicts, there's a lot more at stake than language. The language we speak is part of who we are. It gives us a powerful sense of belonging with those who speak like us, and an equally powerful sense of difference from those who don't. Little wonder, then, that when someone attacks our language -- or even just our accent -- we feel that we are being attacked. And we respond accordingly. Discriminate against a language, and you discriminate against its speakers; disrespect my language, and you disrespect me.
That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from Paul B. Garrett, Assistant Professor of Linguistic Anthropology at Temple University. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. Visit us at www.cofc.edu/linguist. And keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.
Can you make a living loving languages?
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Let's say you really enjoy languages. At some time in your life -- in school, the military, the Peace Corps or while traveling abroad -- you found that learning how a language works -- and using it -- was really fun.
And just as you're thinking you might want to study the language in depth, or maybe learn another one, someone looks at you with pity and says: "Foreign languages? Hah!! How're you going to make a living with that?" He may even ask whether you’re planning to take a vow of poverty.
Well, let me respond to that, because there are lots of ways that people who know languages can use that ability to make a living -- and a fairly good one, too.
What most people don't focus on is that there are two ways of looking at the role of language and careers. On the one hand are professions centered around and dependent on language skill. Let's call them "Careers in Language." Obviously one of the first things that comes to mind is teaching, and there are certainly a lot of jobs for language teachers in schools and colleges. Some states are importing teachers from other countries because we don't have enough of them in the U.S. If you like languages and cultures, for goodness sake think about teaching them. I can tell you from personal experience that it's a very rewarding career.
And then, of course, there are the jobs of translator or interpreter. Both require very strong language skills, and special training. If you like variety, both offer a broad range of things to work on, from scientific articles or legal contracts to translating an ad for peanut butter into another language -- so that it's culturally correct.
Interpreters can help a monolingual patient talk about symptoms to a doctor who doesn't speak his language, travel with executives on business abroad -- or maybe serve on the "language line," a telephone system that puts an interpreter on the phone whenever one is needed. Really good translators and interpreters aren't easy to find. So there are a great number of jobs in government agencies and international firms.
None of those jobs can be done without language skill, which is why I called them "Careers in Language." But let's be clear, most people -- even those who speak and read other languages -- don't have those kinds of careers. The other side of the coin is what we might call "Language in Careers" -- and here the list is endless: business people, social workers, police, actors, marketers, journalists... a wide variety of professions in which language is not at the core. But knowing a language makes you better at it.
It's a tool... that gives you leverage. The business person with a second language has an advantage in the global economy, so it's common for new hires with language skills to come in at higher pay (so much for the "vow of poverty"); scientists can read the work of foreign researchers who may not write in English; librarians can work with books from other countries; environmentalists can fight more effectively to preserve the rain forest.
And think about government. Diplomats in the Foreign Service have to have strong proficiency in at least one language to be tenured, and -- very recently -- the military made the same requirement for its officers. The CIA and National Security Agency have hundreds of positions that require language skill. And how about the FBI, Census Bureau, or Customs Service? There are more than 80 federal agencies that want you for your language skills in more than 100 languages. Not because these jobs are centered on language, like the teacher or translator. But because language skills give you more options, make you more effective at whatever you do.
So, if you start a language, and you find you love it, follow your heart. Give it the time it takes to learn it well. One way or another ... it'll pay off.
That's the language thought for today, which comes from Frederick Jackson of the federal Interagency Language Roundtable. And this is the five-minute linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. Visit us at www.cofc.edu/linguist. And keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.
What don't we know about language?
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Actually, there's a lot we don't know about language. Although it's been with us for tens of thousands of years, we've studied it scientifically for a relatively short time. So what do we still need to know?
Well, although we've gotten quite good at identifying differences between languages, it wasn't until the last few decades that we focused on what languages have in common. One important thing they share is that all languages can be learned relatively easily by children. Which leads linguists to believe that all languages have some kind of basic structure in common -- a kind of universal grammar that children know instinctively. What we do't know yet is what those universal rules are and exactly what instinctive knowledge about language children are born with.
One of the best ways to figure that out, by the way, is to study and compare as many of the world's languages as possible. Which is one of the reasons we need to preserve and record the languages that are dying out.
What else do we want to know?
Here's a fundamental question: Was there a single mother language that spawned all the rest? Or did many languages spring up in various places as the human race evolved? We know a lot about the history of language, but we may never know how it all started.
We know a lot about the Indo-European language family, but less about language families in Asia or Africa or the Americas. Or about orphan languages -- like Basque -- whose connections with any known language family ... are murky.
We know that languages change over the centuries, and we know how they change. But why do they change? Are languages simply unstable, like a rudderless boat, and imperfectly learned from generation to generation?
We know more than ever before about how to teach languages. But we'd like to know why some adults learn languages easily... while others don't. We'd like to know whether it's possible to speed up the process of learning a new language, and how to do it.
We've succeeded in making computers process language. They can make dictionaries and summarize articles, make translations and exchange e-mail, read out loud and recognize people from their voices. But will we ever teach one to use language the way humans do; to make inferences; express anger; or discuss a political campaign?
What more can we learn about how species other than humans communicate with each other? Which raises the question, if there is alien intelligence in a galaxy far, far away, how will we communicate with it?
So there's a lot to think about. Some of the answers -- for example on language origins -- may come from new discoveries in paleontology. Some may come from neuroscience, as we learn more about the workings of the brain. Some may come from our new understanding of the human genome. Or from advances in anthropology, sociology, psychology, or even math.
In some ways we know a lot; in other ways we're just getting started. But knowing languages is a joy. And knowing more about language is a marvelous quest -- into the most human of human activities.
This is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston -- in cooperation with the National Museum of Language -- signing off for the last time. We hope you enjoyed this overview of languages and language. If you did -- or if there are things you’d like to know more about -- send us a comment at www.cofc.edu/linguist. The quality of these programs was due to the careful guidance of our producer, Joan Mack, our Technical Director Victor Mazyck, and the more than 50 language experts from 23 states and the United Kingdom who volunteered their time and expertise to help us celebrate the Year of Languages. I want to thank them all.
By the way, all the essays in this series -- and a few more -- will be published as a book in the summer of 2006 under the title: The Five-Minute Linguist. Watch for it. And in the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.