Language Extinction / Endangered Languages

[Mighty_Emperor]

Aren't we speaking a child of Old French and Old English?

Its trickier we are essentially speaking an acretion of languages from the various groups that have kicked our collective ancestral asses over the ages. There are Celtic hints poking up through an Anglo Saxon (Frisian) base with extra bits and pieces of other languages Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish (esp. seen in place names within the Danelaw) and overall a second layer of Norman French which has helped give us the "depth and richness" people talk about as we have a lot of essentially Germanic and Romance words for similar things (often shown in the difference between the raw and the cooked) - cow/beef, etc. and lets not forget our impressive array of swearing (how do people with Tourettes cope in other langauges???).

So this goes back to the idea about how it is partly a product of conquest and acculturation - we could say the same for Latin 2000 years ago. Where English was learned as second language the British Empire made it the language of the ruling/beauracratic class (where it wasa first language we did it by simply invading and wiping out anyone who was there) and so to advance people had to learn it. American "cultural imperialism" has helped finish off the job with music, films, TV, Internet, etc. blasting English into people's homes. It becomes a postive feedback loop eventually - people learn English as a seocnd language because so mny speak it which means more people have to learn it, etc., etc.

However, I'm unsure if people looking at the English language 1,000 years ago would have been able to guess it would have grown to this level.

 

[lemonpie3]

Well I kind of meant at the point where the Normans came over and kicked our sorry asses (to use an americanism) there was a struggle between English and French; but I take your point that English at that point was a soup of Frisian, Scandi and a pile of other ingredients.

I expect people looking at the English language a thousand years ago would have expected Latin to go on and on as a world or universal language. It still was until fairly recently, didn't it? Didn't Newton write one of his scientific things (technical term) in Latin?

Having said that, I very much doubt that Chinese could become a future Lingua Franca (is that the right term?) as there are intrinsic aspects of it that make it a tough choice for a second language. Politically, I can see where the argument is. But in real terms, the writing system, the pronunciation... it doesn't really lend itself to communication between non-native speakers. IMO.

 

[ignatiusII]

English, for all its glorious complexity, isn't utilized all that well by the average native speaker; is it worth still trying to maintain the distinction between, say, "less" and "fewer" or do we give in to the sort of people who write "i want 2 give this 2 u" and call it a lost cause?

In my former capacity in admissions at a local university, I was taken aback at the large numbers of applicants ( who scored relatively high in SATs ) who submitted forms that were filled with indecipherable scrawls, as well as the requisite misspellings and slang. A great many of the applications were simply four and five page run-on sentences, replete with seemingly complete ignorance of punctuation ( and syntax, for that matter ). If, as some have claimed, the future of the english language ( at least in the US ) is some huge, unmanageable polyglot mishmash, then the blame must be laid at the feet of the american educational system, wherein 'just getting by' in terms of one's proficiency in language and writing skills is the minimum standard not only for academic advancement, but also for use in everyday life. This seems to be a type of inexcusable, intentional stupidity, which is constantly reinforced by pop culture, and apathy by educators.

 

[ENTIANONMULTI]

Ignatius,
The slip in the quality of written and spoken English in a lot of cases is that at least in the UK provided the meaning of the written work is not affected by any grammatical or spelling errors then it has served its purpose.
After all punishing someone whose work shows knowledge but an inability to punctuate or spell is somewhat draconian, finally people’s vocabularies may be varied to suit both the medium and purpose of the intercourse that they are conducting.

Of course all spelling and grammar checks of the above where provided by Microsoft.

 

[Leaferne]

Ignatius, I found the same thing when I was teaching. This uni has the highest admission standards in Canada, and yet the written work my students handed in could be abysmal sometimes. (I particularly enjoyed the students who told me that Mr. So&So or Miss Whatsit in high school told them that THAT was how it was done, and that was that. Hep me jeebus)

 

[ignatiusII]

After all punishing someone whose work shows knowledge but an inability to punctuate or spell is somewhat draconian, finally people’s vocabularies may be varied to suit both the medium and purpose of the intercourse that they are conducting.

I am certainly not advocating punishment for deficiencies in one's grasp of the language; however, those individuals who refuse to make even a rudimentary attempt at improving the skills necessary for competing in an overcrowded and highly competitive job market may very well find themselves 'holding the bag' as it were, when they are passed over in hiring in favor of individuals from other countries ( and these are generally 'third-world' countries, whose citizens are usually denied even the most basic of educational advatages we often take for granted ), and their proficiencies in english grammar often exceed those of the native-born speaker. As is often the case in the US, this is usually followed by much hue and cry over 'damn foreigners stealing our jobs', however, the 'foreigners' did nothing of the sort; they merely applied themselves to the challenges of mastering the english language, skills which the native-born speaker either ridiculed, or deemed unimportant, until it was to his own detriment.

 

[Alexius4]

Part of my present job involves occasionally prep'ing students for SAT; it may be ETS mythology, but I have heard it said the reason the standard SAT doesn't administer an essay is that they assume the candidate is not upto it, and will be tutored in composition and informal reasoning during their first year at college.

There are many compelling reasons to promote native language skills at pre-university level, but in my opinion one of the weightiest is that a good knowledge of your own language makes other languages transparent. Trying to learn another language without an understanding of grammar is tough; with a good working knowledge, it becomes considerably easier.

 

[mendhak]

Back up, back up there!

Nothing wrong with studying and attempting to preserve a language! Allow it to get replaced, because it is inevitable as the Reverend Agent Smith would say. But there ought to be some sort of a compendium that documented the entire language in all of its quirkness. Simply creating a dictionary wouldn't suffice, since each language has its own peculiarities which one must know in order to understand a sentence, a paragraph or a story.

For example, Persian has no future tense in the language. In order to tell someone that you will be going to the park, you say, "I am going to the park." and it has to be understood in context.

Now if a language such as Persian, or say, Sanskrit were gone and went undocumented (a preservation), then we'd never understand the Ramayana or Mahabharata and come to wonder why they are talking about flying gods and aliens and nuclear wars.

You can see where this is headed.

 

[mendhak]

This seems to be a type of inexcusable, intentional stupidity, which is constantly reinforced by pop culture, and apathy by educators.

I often get asked by my friends,

"how cum u use complet sentences wid grammer and all that in your mails!!!11"

 

[taras]

I love the way people in arguments about language always bring out the semi-colons, long words and perfect grammar....

 

[ignatiusII]

I love the way people in arguments about language always bring out the semi-colons, long words and perfect grammar....

Terribly sorry. What I meant to say, was: Me no like people talk language bad! It make me mad!

 

[ENTIANONMULTI]

I love the way people in arguments about language always bring out the semi-colons, long words and perfect grammar....

but is that F7 perfect spelling and grammar? i seriously think that an increase in reliance on computers and it's typing reliance does not help spelling or grammar as a mistake could be either a typo or a lack of knowledge. Of couse it does improve my legibility.
till i pick a silly font or size

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

The forbidden tongue

Nushu, the world's only language to be created and used solely by women, was finally declared extinct last year. But try telling that to the women still using it, writes Jon Watts

Friday September 23, 2005
The Guardian

Nushu, the secret women's script of the Yao minority in China, was widely declared extinct last year, when its most famous user, Yang Huangyi, a local matriarch, died aged 92. But obituaries for the world's only gender-specific language appear to have been premature.

This secret code, once used as a covert, intimate form of expression for heretical feelings about the frustration, melancholy and loneliness of wives forced into arranged marriages and semi-imprisonment in this remote mountain community in southwest Hunan, is now being exploited in a way that is empowering and enriching women.

The impetus is economic and the results anything but romantic. But the reinvention of the embroidered script as a tourist moneyspinner is reaping dividends and a new generation of girls is studying the language not for a means of intimate communication but because it offers a chance to earn more than their brothers and fathers.

It was not always so. For much of its still sketchy history, Nushu, which means women's writing, has been associated with persecution and misery. Its origins are obscure. Romantically minded linguists trace it back to a concubine of an emperor of the Song dynasty (960-1279), who is said to have used the secret script to write to sisters and friends outside the court. A more prosaic explanation is that Nushu is a remnant of a 4,000-year-old language stamped out elsewhere by the first emperor of China, Qin Shihuang, who decreed one standardised mandarin script as a means to unite the country. Any man who used an alternative writing style was put to death. But women, who were kept at home as part of the family property, were not considered important enough to warrant an application of the law. Denied an education, mothers passed on the secret code, with its slender characters of sloping lines and dots, to their daughters. Experts estimate that the language has between 1,800 and 2,500 characters, each representing a syllable of the local Tuhua dialect. By contrast, mandarin has 30,000 ideograms, each with a different meaning.

By the 19th century, Nushu was being used in poems, letters and embroidery by groups of "sworn sisters", who formed secret bonds of friendship. Some think it may have formed the basis for a lesbian cult, but more likely it was simply an outlet for feelings of sisterly love and sadness at having to marry. "In Nushu literature, there is no reference at all to sex. Chinese women are rather conservative in that respect," says Hu Meiyue, a teacher in Jiangyong.

But there are heretical expressions of independence and frustration with men. One Nushu tale describes a wife in an arranged marriage who runs away on her wedding night after discovering how ugly her husband is. Another tells of a woman who is so impatient that she marches off to her fiance's home demanding to know why he has not yet married her.

In most writings, however, the dominant theme is resignation rather than rebellion. The happiest Nushu poems are those exchanged by girlfriends when they become "sworn sisters". The saddest - and most famous - form of Nushu literature is the third-day book, a lament for the loss of a sister to marriage. These books, presented to brides three days after their wedding, also contained space at the back to be used as a diary. Wives considered these so precious that they had them buried or burned with them when they died, so they could take the Nushu from their sworn sisters to the next world.

Only a handful survive, one of which belonged to the great grandmother of Hu Meiyue. As she leafs through the embroidered indigo cotton-and-linen-bound book, the 100-year-old pages look in danger of crumbling. But the words still have power. "Now we sit together because our feelings are disturbed by the imminent marriage of one of our sworn sisters and we must write the third-day book. We cherish the days when we are together and hate losing one of our sisters. After she gets married it will be difficult to meet her so we worry that she will be lonely. For a woman, marriage means losing everything, including her family and her sworn sisters."

Until well into the last century, a Chinese woman's life was measured by "three followings" - her father before marriage, her husband after, and her son when he became head of the household. So the final words of advice from her sworn sisters, were: "Be a good wife, do lots of embroidery and try your best to tolerate your husband's family."

But Yao women's lives have been transformed. "We are now educated and we have the freedom to choose our husbands," says Hu, who started teaching the script four years ago and has seen it pushed into the international limelight and used to promote the local economy.

Academics have compiled a Nushu dictionary, a school has been opened to teach the language and the Ford Foundation is donating $209,000 to build a museum to preserve the remaining third-day books and embroidery. A Hong Kong company has invested several million yuan for the construction of roads, hotels and parks - all aimed at exploiting Nushu's growing fame.

"It is one of our main selling points," says Zheng Shiqiu, head of the ethnic minority division of the local government. "Nushu is the only women's script in the world that is still alive."

The commercial exploitation of the language is not pretty, but it is transforming relations between the sexes in a way that would have shocked the writers of the old third-day books. Now that women are bringing in money through Nushu (which many have only started learning in the past few years), they have moved to the centre of the community's economic and cultural life. After all, tourists and academics are not interested in the men, but instead come to hear the women sing, sew and write. This has brought them a kind of power.

The transformation is evident in Huang Yuan. "Things are different these days. We have real equality of the sexes," she says. Huang is 29 and not yet engaged, which would have been a source of consternation for a woman just 10 years ago. As she says, "I'm still young. I don't need to rush into marriage." At the Nushu Garden school, the contrast with the elderly generation could not be more different. Ni Youju, now 80, was engaged while still a baby. "I couldn't say if it was a happy or a sad marriage. Life was too much of a struggle to think about such things. But I was happy on my wedding day because it meant there was someone else to look after me. We are still together and he doesn't drink or smoke or gamble too much so I guess I can't complain."

Ni's mother taught her Nushu when she was 12, but she never had sworn sisters because her family was too poor. "There was a group that met near my house and I used to go and listen to them sing," she says. In the classes, she is now the most enthusiastic singer.

Despite the investment, there are still fears that the language may die out. As Zhou Huijuan, who has spent 10 years writing a biography in the script, says: "In the past, girls never used to be educated so they needed their own language. But now they study mandarin at school, so why should they bother learning Nushu - a script that very few other people can understand?"

But her brother, who played a major role in bringing the language to international attention, disagrees. "Nushu is based on a local dialect that people still speak. As a form of expression and a part of our cultural heritage, it lives on," says Zhou Shuoyi.

One of the new legion of teachers is He Jinghua, who writes - and sells - third-day books with a handy mandarin translation for tourists. "Even today, I think it is still necessary for women to express their feelings in Nushu," says the 67-year-old, who only started writing the language in 1996. "There are some moods - particularly of sadness and loneliness - that cannot be conveyed as well in mandarin. Nushu is a more intimate language."

Some things have not changed. Jinghua is teaching Nushu to her 13-year-old granddaughter Pu Lin. Her husband fans himself in the corner. He does not understand the language. Nor does his grandson. I ask He if she will teach the language to the boy now that it has become public knowledge. "No," she says. "Nushu is only for women. We cannot tell men how to use it."

www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1576488,00.html

 

[gerardwilkie]

I'm a native speaker of a 'dying' language , Gaelic . It has many dialects and only relatively recently was it standardised (late 1980s , I think). The dialect I speak is Ulster Irish (my family are from Donegal) . People try to distinguish between Irish and Scottish as if they were two different languages , but this is really not the case . What there is is a dialect continuum from south to north , so that a Gaelic speaker from Cork may have real difficulty understanding one from Caithness as they are at either end of the continuum . Ulster Irish is much the same as the Gaelic of Argyll , and in its purest from is actually closer to the Scottish dialects than the Irish ones .
Here in Scotland , nobody is too interested in learning or keeping the language alive . We have TV and radio programmes in the language , but its numbers of speakers are falling ( only around 50,00 people speak it here nowadays ) . The trouble is , is that it can never compete with English. Globalization is a mark of the age we live in , and adapt we must.
It is unfortunate that minority languages are dying out under the influence of languages like English and Spanish , but we must ensure that we keep documents about the tongue (grammars , dictionaries etc.) . History is littered with dead languages (Tocharian , Illyrian , Lydian and Gaulish to name a few) , but remnants of the culture live on the peoples of that area even to this day . Minority languages may be engulfed by those dominant languages , but as long as there are people on this earth , we will find some way to communicate to each other , whatever language it be in . I feel that within a couple of centuries there may only be 1 language used for communication , and it'll probably be English.

 

[Timble2]

... I feel that within a couple of centuries there may only be 1 language used for communication , and it'll probably be English.

I think we'll be down to English, Spanish and Mandarin (or at least some form of Chinese), probably with a few pidgin and creole languages.

 

[rynner2]

....
Of course all spelling and grammar checks of the above where provided by Microsoft.

A pity that MS doesn't know the difference between 'where' and 'were', then!

 

[Graylien]

Yesterday, I saw a sign outside an alternative therapies/medicine shop which proclaimed that they could cure "Arthuritis".

 

[rynner2]

CONFERENCE ON THE FUTURE OF CORNISH LANGUAGE


11:00 - 19 September 2005

The future of the Cornish language was discussed at a conference in the county on Saturday. The Government is investing £240,000 over the next three years to promote the language, thought to be spoken by between 200 and 500 people.

It is part of the Cornish Language Strategy which was announced earlier in the year.

The conference was chaired by Liberal Democrat Cornish MP Andrew George and discussed the future shaping of the language.

Mr George, MP for St Ives, who led the campaign for Cornwall to be added to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, swore his allegiance to the Queen in Cornish in May after the General Election.

He was also the first MP to use the language in the House of Commons in 1997, as part of his maiden speech.

Bernard Deacon, from the Institute of Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter in Cornwall, said he was hopeful the investment would result in an increase in the number of people who speak the language.

The conference was held at the Combined Universities Campus at Tremough, near Penryn.

WMN
A quarter of a million quid to revive a dead language!

The irony is, many of the people who want to revive it are not even Cornish. Most ordinary Cornish people don't really care enough to want to revive it, and amongst those that do, there are disputes about which version of Cornish should be revived! (There are alternative spellings and grammars, because what passes for Cornish today is really a reconstructed language, rebuilt on analogies with Breton and Welsh, closely related languages which haven't yet died out.)

 

[Stormkhan]

Show me a dying language and I'll show you a vicious battle amongst academics for the huge grants paid for pointless research.

 

[ramonmercado]

Linking of Languages May Speak Volumes

September 27, 2005
Linking of Languages May Speak Volumes
By NICHOLAS WADE
Linguists have devised a new way of linking languages, which they say has allowed them to reconstruct a network of the languages spoken in islands near New Guinea.

The new method is designed for languages so old that little trace of their common vocabulary remains. It forges connections between languages through grammatical features, which change less quickly than words.

With the new tool, historians may be able to peer considerably further back in time than the 5,000 to 7,000 years or so that many linguists see as the limit beyond which no sure connections can be made between languages.

The authors of the new method say the relationships they can construct may be 10,000 years or older.

The researchers, who were led by Michael Dunn, of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, Holland, have published their work in the current issue of Science.

They say that on the basis of grammatical similarities they have constructed a network of the Papuan languages spoken in the island groups east of Papua New Guinea. Traveling eastward, these are the Bismarck Islands, Bougainville and the Solomon Islands.

The grammar-derived network correctly assigns all languages to their respective archipelagos, showing it has picked up the relatedness to be expected from geography. But the network gives a puzzling placement to the Solomon Island languages.

They fall in between those of the Bismarcks and Bougainville, stepping out of the sequence expected if the islands were first occupied by people migrating from west to east.

The explanation, Dr. Dunn and his colleagues say, is that 10,000 years ago, when sea levels were much lower because of the Pleistocene ice age, Bougainville and the Solomon Islands would have been joined in a single land mass, while the Bismarcks were always separate.

This might explain the Bougainville languages' closer relationship to those of the Solomons and distance from those of the Bismarcks. It would also indicate that the grammar-based linking is picking up a signal from 10,000 years ago.

The Solomons are well known as the arena in which American and Japanese forces clashed in World War II in the battle at Guadalcanal. They are of interest to linguists for a different reason.

They lie at the very end of a migration route that might have been taken by the first modern humans, who left Africa some 50,000 years ago, and that few others may have reached.

These early people reached Australia 5,000 years later and were established in the Bismarcks and Solomons by 35,000 years ago. A much later group of emigrants, people speaking Austronesian, is known to have reached the islands about 4,000 years ago from a home base in Taiwan.

The Austronesian languages are a distinctive family with many shared words. Many Papuan languages, by contrast, have lost any obvious relationship with each other, a sign of great antiquity.

William Foley, a linguist at the University of Sydney, has noted that the word structure of the Bougainville languages resembles those of Trans New Guinea, the languages spoken in a broad swath across the New Guinea highlands.

He has also found similarities between the Trans New Guinea languages and those of Australia, to which the island of Papua New Guinea was joined until 8,000 years ago in a super continent known as Sahul.

Could all these languages be echoes of the ancient tongue spoken by the first humans to arrive in Sahul? "That is part of the reason why we care about these languages and continue to look at them," Dr. Dunn said.

His work is part of a joint project by British, Dutch, German and Swedish researchers to study the languages, genetics and archaeology of people in the Bismarcks-Solomons archipelago and see if the history of Papuan speakers can be reconstructed.

Although all the non-Austronesian languages in the region are called Papuan, they do not have much in common with each other because time has erased most of their common vocabulary. Whether the remaining shared vocabulary is enough to establish relationships between the languages is a matter of dispute.

The late Joseph Greenberg, the great classifier of the world's languages, believed that all the Papuan languages, along with those of Tasmania and the Andaman Islands, belonged to a family he called Indo-Pacific.

Many linguists, including Dr. Dunn, reject Dr. Greenberg's grouping on the grounds that there are not enough remaining words of clearly common origin to define relationships between the Papuan languages. That was why Dr. Dunn's team sought to link the languages through grammatical features, borrowing a statistical approach used by biologists to connect related objects in the most plausible way.

Dr. Merritt Ruhlen, a colleague of Dr. Greenberg's, criticized Dr. Dunn's team for calling the languages of the region "a group of hitherto unrelatable isolates," since Dr. Greenberg had related them on the basis of their shared vocabulary and with much the same result as the grammar-based method.

But Russell Gray, a biologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand who has pioneered applying biological tree-drawing methods to linguistics, writes in Science that the grammar-based approach will be "widely emulated" by researchers studying languages in other regions of the world. The new technique is "very promising," he said in an e-mail message.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/science/27lang.html

 

[zulu25]

I agree with rjm, languages dying is nothing to be sad about. The stronger languages, with the biggest depth of meaning and choice of words, will always prevail. English has absorbed the best features of other languages and discarded pointless elements, making it stronger than ever. Soon it will dominate the world.... and then the UNIVERSE! MWHAHAHAHAHA!... er, yeah, nothing to worry about...

What I find sad is people trying to preserve languages that would otherwise die "of natural causes" (eg. gaelic), when the money spent on this pointless and unnatural activity could be better directed to saving lives rather than imposing fascistic ideals of 'diversity'.

*hides*

(I'm responding to a post that's over a year old, but

The death of a language is sad, in that it represents the death of a culture and of a way of thought, a way of looking at the world. There is an "English (language)" way of looking at the world, a "French (language)" way of looking at the world, and so forth, and each of these styles of perception have a unique richness to them.

I'm with you in that I'm not particularly in favor of keeping a language on artificial life-support when it is already clinically dead, but to think that English is the best and that it has "discarded pointless features" of other languages is a sign that you're missing something.

I'll give an oversimplified but pithy analysis that a Latin American friend of mine once gave me when we were discussing the difference between Spanish (and I suppose this goes for all romance languages) and English. He said, "Look at English. Everything is in neutral, there is no gender. This is reflective of the English mind, which is especially focused on things economic, on business. Look at how successful the mercantile culture of England and the U.S. has been. We latins, we would rather sit back with a beer and a pretty girl than deal with debits and credits, and this is reflected in our use of gender in our language."

Language is a very political thing, too. It is deeply rooted in culture, in feeling, and in perception. I'm reminded of a something in Puerto Rican history. After it was ceded to the U.S. by Spain, at a certain point the U.S. authorities banned teaching in Spanish. They wanted to "Americanize" the Island, so they tried to force the children to make English their first language.

While this was a foolish and grossly insensitive move that was ultimately abandoned after several years, the reasoning behind the ban was logical: to the extent that someone speaks your language, and reads the same books and newspapers as you, and absorbs the same radio and television programming as you do, they will think in the same terms as you do and they will be more like you. To the extent that members of an ethnic group are ignorant of their own language, they will be ignorant of the culture and history of their forefathers, except for the materials that have been translated into the dominant language.

There's also the matter that some things, like poetry and literature, often lose much in the translation. Not always, but frequently. If you can't read a work in its original language, it's better to read it in translation that not to read it at all, but you'll miss a few percentage points of beauty and understanding. This goes both ways – from non-English to English and vice versa.

English certainly is the world's dominant language today. I'm with posters "Mighty Emperor" and "Lemonpie3" who see this as a function of the political and economic dominance of first the British, then the Americans, and not a function of the language itself, although as I suggested above, the language may have helped them to achieve economic domination.

But, heaven forbid, if WWII had turned out differently, or if the Cold War had turned hot and Russia won, the world would be speaking German or Russian today.

 

[MrRING]

LINK

"New World" Film Revives Extinct Native American Tongue
Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News

January 20, 2006
For his movie The New World, which arrives in U.S. theaters nationwide today, director Terrence Malick wanted to accurately recreate the sights and sounds of a 17th-century English colony.

The film depicts the clash between the native Algonquian Indians and English settlers at the founding of Jamestown in present-day Virginia. Malick therefore decided to have the Native American characters speak the indigenous language of the time—Virginia Algonquian.

There was only one problem: No one had spoken the tongue for about 200 years.

Enter Blair Rudes, a linguist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. As the amount of Virginia Algonquian dialogue spoken in the movie increased from just two scenes to more than a third of the film, Rudes found himself reconstructing an entire language that had long gone extinct.

National Geographic News recently spoke with Rudes about the challenges of bringing a language back from the dead.

It sounds like the filmmakers had no idea what they were getting themselves into with this language restoration project.

Terrence Malick wanted the movie to be as authentic as possible. It was his decision to use the native language indigenous to the area at the founding of Jamestown. What he didnt know was that the language had been extinct since the late 18th or early 19th century.

Virginia Algonquian is part of a family of languages known as Algonquian, right?

Yes, there were about 800 native languages in North America, and five or six families. The Algonquian family was one of the largest. It extended from the province of Manitoba [in Canada] to the eastern seaboard and down to North Carolina. On the East Coast, there were perhaps 15 Algonquian languages. Most no longer have any speakers.

Why did the languages on the coast go extinct first?

That was simply a contact phenomenon. When the English first arrived, they were the minority population, and they were dependent upon the majority Algonquian speakers for their survival. So initially they learned some Algonquian.

 

[rjmrjmrjm]

Facinating. I wonder how they would manage to construct the correct accent though?

 

[ramonmercado]

Maybe it will attract more money and resources now that there might be something in it other than mere knowledge. I shudder though at the thought of us Multi National getting a patent on some "lesser" language.

Endangered languages encode plant and animal knowledge
17:32 19 February 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Gaia Vince, San Francisco

Saving indigenous languages from extinction is the only way to preserve traditional knowledge about plants and animals that have yet to be discovered by Western scientists, says a linguist and cultural expert.

More than half of the word's 7000 languages are endangered, because they consist of an unsustainably small – and declining – speaker base. Each language death represents a significant erosion of human knowledge about local plant and animal life that was acquired over many centuries, says David Harrison at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, US.

Information about local ecosystems is so intricately woven into these languages that it cannot be replaced simply through translation, he explains. The indigenous taxonomy alone can provide a huge range of information about species, which young speakers in these tribes acquire instantly through learning the name.

For example, the Siberian Todzhu tribe has many different and complex names for reindeer, according to the animals' life stages. What is called a "chary" by the Todzu, would be translated in English as "a two-year-old male, un-castrated, rideable reindeer".

Trout or salmon?
Other indigenous taxonomy includes important detail about the genetic relationships between species of agricultural value, animal behaviour and other ethnobotanic or zoologic knowledge.

Scientists wishing to learn more about species in remote places should liaise with the people who have lived alongside them for centuries, Harrison says. The information contained in the words used to describe and group them might take many years to determine in the lab, he adds.

For example, two types of trout-like fish, called steelhead trout and cutthroat trout in English, are labelled as being types of salmon in the language of the Halkomelem Musqueam tribe of British Columbia in Canada. Genetic analysis has shown that they are in fact of the salmon genus, and not trout at all.

Cryptic species
Only around 20% of the world's plant and animal life has been officially classified, according to Edward O Wilson, at Harvard University in Massachusetts, US. But much of the remaining 80% is known, he believes - just not to scientists in the West.

Some of these "unknown" species include so-called cryptic species, in which one species turns out to be many more. An example of this is the neotropical skipper butterfly, Astraptes fulgerator, which despite looking identical, turned out to be 10 distinct species after DNA analysis (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 101, p 14812). The language of the local Costa Rican tribe where the butterfly is found, has a different name for the larvae of each of the 10 species, Harrison points out.

David Harrison spoke at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Francisco, California, on Saturday.

Related Articles

Half of all languages face extinction this century
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn4685
16 February 2004

You are what you speak
http://environment.newscientist.com/art ... 623715.400
30 November 2002

Death of a mother tongue
http://environment.newscientist.com/art ... 920113.700
06 January 1996


Weblinks

David Harrison, Swarthmore College
http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/releases ... rison.html

Ethnologue, a language research resource
http://www.ethnologue.com/bibliography.asp


Languages

 

[ramonmercado]

Heres a language making a come-back for a change.

Research Will Help To Revive 'Dead' Manx Language
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 140656.htm

ScienceDaily (Feb. 2, 2009) — A researcher at the University of Liverpool has produced the first modern, comprehensive handbook on Manx Gaelic – a language thought to have died out in the mid 19th Century.

As records detailing the grammatical construction of the language are rare, expert Jennifer Kewley Draskau, at the University’s Centre for Manx Studies, used texts dating back to the 15th Century as well as unstructured, informal conversations between fluent native speakers on the Isle on Man. She also studied the 18th Century Manx Bible and modern poetry to produce the handbook, called Practical Manx, a guide to the grammar and morphology of the language.

Manx Gaelic – an off-shoot of Old Irish – virtually died out as community speech when English became the language of trade in the 19th Century. Manx is experiencing a revival and more than 600 people now claim to speak the language. The new study is the first attempt to record and describe the language, and the first time in more than a century that a grammar of Manx has been produced.

Jennifer said: “The research illustrates how language can alter over time due to changes in the economic and social environment. The wealthy merchants of the Isle of Man abandoned the language in favour of English in the 1900s, and Manx became associated with poverty. In 1871, 25% of the Island’s population spoke Manx. By 1961 the number of speakers had dropped to 0.35%.

“Manx is experiencing a remarkable revival and is now taught in schools and evening classes. Government schemes have also ensured that Manx is used on all road signs whilst radio stations now broadcast a certain amount of content in the language.

“This new handbook will provide a measure of stability and consolidation for the language, harmonising elements from different time periods and modes of usage, as well as increasing confidence in the Manx speaking community.”

Practical Manx is published by Liverpool University Press.

 

[taras]

Old Possum's Book of Practical Manx?

 

[ramonmercado]

Cornish language extinct, says UN
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/engl ... 900972.stm

The next edition of the atlas could feature revitalised languages
The Cornish language has been branded "extinct" by linguistic experts, sparking protests from speakers.

Thirty linguists worked on Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, compiled by Unesco, the cultural section of the United Nations.

Cornish is believed to have died out as a first language in 1777.

But the Cornish Language Partnership says the number of speakers has risen in the past 20 years and there should be a section for revitalised languages.

Saying Cornish is extinct implies there are no speakers and the language is dead, which it isn't

Jenefer Lowe, Cornish Language Partnership

Unesco's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger features about 2,500 dialects.

There are thought to be about 300 fluent speakers of Cornish.

But Jenefer Lowe, development manager of the Cornish Language Partnership, said there were thousands who had a "smattering" of the language.

"Saying Cornish is extinct implies there are no speakers and the language is dead, which it isn't," she said.

"Unesco's study doesn't take into account languages which have growing numbers of speakers and in the past 20 years the revival of Cornish has really gathered momentum."

Last year the partnership agreed a single written form of Cornish which brought together several different forms of the language.



It is among a group of languages that turned out not to be extinct but merely sleeping



Christopher Moseley, editor-in-chief of the atlas



Mrs Lowe said: "There's no category for a language that is revitalised and revived.

"What they need to do is add a category.

"It should be recognised that languages do revive and it's a fluid state."

Christopher Moseley, an Australian linguist and editor-in-chief of the atlas, told BBC News he would consider a new classification.

He said: "I have always been optimistic about Cornish and Manx.

"There is a groundswell of interest in them, although the number of speakers is small.

"Perhaps in the next edition we shall have a 'being revived' category.

"[Cornish] is among a group of languages that turned out not to be extinct but merely sleeping."

 

[mugwumpaddict]

Heres a language making a come-back for a change.

Research Will Help To Revive 'Dead' Manx Language
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 140656.htm

ScienceDaily (Feb. 2, 2009) — A researcher at the University of Liverpool has produced the first modern, comprehensive handbook on Manx Gaelic – a language thought to have died out in the mid 19th Century.

As records detailing the grammatical construction of the language are rare, expert Jennifer Kewley Draskau, at the University’s Centre for Manx Studies, used texts dating back to the 15th Century as well as unstructured, informal conversations between fluent native speakers on the Isle on Man. She also studied the 18th Century Manx Bible and modern poetry to produce the handbook, called Practical Manx, a guide to the grammar and morphology of the language.

Manx Gaelic – an off-shoot of Old Irish – virtually died out as community speech when English became the language of trade in the 19th Century. Manx is experiencing a revival and more than 600 people now claim to speak the language. The new study is the first attempt to record and describe the language, and the first time in more than a century that a grammar of Manx has been produced.

Jennifer said: “The research illustrates how language can alter over time due to changes in the economic and social environment. The wealthy merchants of the Isle of Man abandoned the language in favour of English in the 1900s, and Manx became associated with poverty. In 1871, 25% of the Island’s population spoke Manx. By 1961 the number of speakers had dropped to 0.35%.

“Manx is experiencing a remarkable revival and is now taught in schools and evening classes. Government schemes have also ensured that Manx is used on all road signs whilst radio stations now broadcast a certain amount of content in the language.

“This new handbook will provide a measure of stability and consolidation for the language, harmonising elements from different time periods and modes of usage, as well as increasing confidence in the Manx speaking community.”

Practical Manx is published by Liverpool University Press.

This really interested me on a personal level as my family on my mothers side is from the Isle of Man. My great great granmother came over from the Isle to Liverpool in 1886 when she was 16 to get married. She spoke very few words of English mostly Manx.
My mum was born in 1941 and can remember her as an old woman, when she was a young girl. She said that when G.G. Gran got excited she would drop back into Manx so it must have been her first language.

 

[_Cobh_]

That really is good news about Manx. I didn't know it'd had such a revival. It's very encouraging.
To think a language can disappear almost within living memory, as in your family is terrifying.

Very encouraging, thanks for sharing that.

 

[ramonmercado]

Ulster Scots is showing that its revival is not just a flesh in the pan.

MLA questions Ulster-Scots 'porn-event'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/nort ... 920221.stm

By Johnny Caldwell
BBC News


A very unlikely combination - softcore-porn and Ulster-Scots - looks set to be the most controversial offering at this year's Belfast Film Festival.

'Flesh Gordon', an erotic spoof of the Flash Gordon films, is being dubbed in Ulster-Scots at an event billed as Shockin'ly Spaiked O'er Smot (Badly Dubbed Porn) Live.

Three local comedians are to provide a live translation of the 1974 R-rated film.

Although organisers have admitted the event was conceived in the spirit of all things tongue-in-cheek, the mix of Ulster-Scots and porn,will undoubtedly get people talking in the hamely tongue and others.

"The use of Flesh Gordon may seem at first a peculiar choice of film in which to parody Ulster-Scots, but on further review seems an almost logical preference," said a Belfast Film Festival spokeswoman.

"Contrasting Ulster-Scots against such a coarse and roguish piece of film will optimally highlight the extent of the detachment between the culture of the tongue and the culture of the film."

"Ulster-Scots is something over which we all can claim ownership and having enjoyed a raised profile in recent times, so it seems only appropriate that it should be developed and used in a variety of manners."

Although he has not seen Flesh Gordon, Stormont Culture, Arts and Leisure Committee member David McNarry questioned its inclusion in the festival's programme.

"Porn,is porn,is porn - and whether it is done Ulster-Scots-style, well, it really doesn't come into it," said the UUP MLA.

"This event has presumably been given funding and all this kind of thing does is make people look all the harder at an application the next time it comes round.

"The committee wasn't aware of this but the department must have been."

The Alliance Party's Ian Parsley, who has studied linguistics including Ulster-Scots, said: "I think what is actually being ridiculed is the way Ulster-Scots has been promoted rather than Ulster-Scots itself.

"That's a result of it being used by people as part of a political battle, rather being promoted on its genuine linguistic merits."

Shockin'ly Spaiked O'er Smot (Badl-Dubbed-Porn) Live takes place at The Menagarie, University Street, Belfast, on Thursday 2 April at 9pm.