[p2p-research] 90 Percent Of Languages Will Be Extinct Next Century - And That's Good [Futu...

[Ryan]

  Sent to you by Ryan via Google Reader: 90 Percent Of Languages Will Be
Extinct Next Century - And That's Good [Future Linguistics] via io9 by
Alasdair Wilkins on 1/7/10

Linguist and conservative commentator John McWhorter estimates the
6,000 languages spoken today will dwindle to only 600 next century. He
argues that this is part of a process that will confer economic and
health benefits to the affected speakers.

His main point is that the vast, vast majority of threatened languages
are those spoken by isolated indigenous groups, and that these
languages are, in fact, a driving force of their isolation. The
language barrier prevents the absorption of such groups into the larger
society, and this often leaves those affected in significantly worse
economic conditions than their neighbors that speak the majority
language.

McWhorter outlines how the pursuit of a better life can often mean
leaving one's ancestral language behind:

As people speaking indigenous languages migrate to cities, inevitably
they learn globally dominant languages like English and use them in
their interactions with one another. The immigrants' children may use
their parents' indigenous languages at home. But they never know those
languages as part of their public life, and will therefore be more
comfortable with the official language of the world they grow up in.
For the most part, they will speak this language to their own children.
These children will not know the indigenous languages of their
grandparents, and thus pretty soon they will not be spoken. This is
language death.

The controversial part is where he questions the importance of keeping
endangered languages alive. To be sure, he feels languages should be
recorded and preserved, something for which modern technology
thankfully allows, but he questions the wisdom of investing huge
amounts of financial and human resources in ensuring groups continue to
speak the language of their ancestors. Many such languages are
extraordinarily difficult for non-native speakers to learn, which can
hugely complicate the task of professional linguists who try to teach
these languages. When the main motivation to keep a language alive is a
relatively abstract, aesthetic one, it may prove impossible to turn the
tide on language death. McWhorter compares the task to stopping ice
from melting.

He does acknowledge, however, that there are good historical reasons
for people to feel wary of this process, including the growing
universality of English:

Obviously, the discomfort with English "taking over" is due to
associations with imperialism, first on the part of the English and
then, of course, the American behemoth. We cannot erase from our minds
the unsavory aspects of history. Nor should we erase from our minds the
fact that countless languages-such as most of the indigenous languages
of North America and Australia-have become extinct not because of
something as abstract and gradual as globalization, but because of
violence, annexation, and cultural extermination. But we cannot change
that history, nor is it currently conceivable how we could arrange for
some other language to replace the growing universality of English.

He also takes some time to consider the argument that languages should
remain alive because they encode unique cultural worldviews. He
suggests that, although languages are obviously key features of what
make cultures distinct, it is a mistake to overstate how much they
encode thought patterns unique to its speakers.

To illustrate this point, he considers an appraisal of the recently
extinct Alaskan language Eyak:

One school of thought proposes that there is more than mere chance in
how a language's words emerge, and that if we look closely we see
culture peeping through. For example, in its obituary for Eyak, the
Economist proposed that the fact that kultahl meant both leaf and
feather signified a cultural appreciation of the unique spiritual
relationship of trees and birds. But in English we use hover to refer
both to the act of waiting, suspended, in the air and the act of
staying close to a mate at a cocktail party to ward off potential
rivals. Notice how much less interesting that is to us than the bit
about the Eyak and leaves and feathers.

As someone with a smattering of linguistics background, I'm not
necessarily convinced by everything McWhorter puts forth, but his paper
is well worth reading for a somewhat heterodox perspective on language
death and how it will fit with our other cultural priorities in the
next hundred years.

[World Affairs Journal]



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