Does the number of speakers of a language determine its fate? (original) (raw)
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There are about 6,700 languages spoken on Earth today. To consider the future survival of these languages I will take as my starting point a provocative quotation on the back cover of a recent book by Andrew Dalby: "a language dies every two weeks: what are we going to do about it?" Are languages indeed disappearing and, if so, how and why? Where do suggestions come from of language loss at the rate of one language per fortnight, and what are some possible responses to what looks like an impending crisis for the survival of the world's languages? Are all smaller languages doomed to extinction, or are there signs that loss of languages can be reversed?
Can a language with millions of speakers be endangered?
The dialogue on language endangerment worldwide has largely focused on languages with small speaker populations, in line with Krauss’s (1992) prediction that any language with a speaker population of less than 100,000 is at risk. The relationship between population size and language vitality is particularly relevant in the Indonesian context, where over 700 local languages have speaker populations that range from single digits to tens of millions of speakers. This paper considers the role of size in determining the fate of these local languages, against the backdrop of the highly successful development of Indonesian as a national language. Using Javanese as a case study, we show that even a language with over 80 million speakers can be at risk, a trend that has serious implications for all of the languages of Indonesia. Although a large population may signal a greater likelihood for official recognition and a more diverse speaker population that is less likely to simultaneously shift away from the L1, size alone cannot predict whether robust intergenerational transmission is occurring. Rather a clearer understanding of the demographic, sociolinguistic, and attitudinal factors that lead to individual and community decisions about intergenerational transmission are essential for assessing risk of endangerment.
The world's languages in crisis: A 20-year update
The world's languages in crisis" (Krauss 1992), the great linguistic call to arms in the face of the looming language endangerment crisis, was first delivered in an Endangered Languages Symposium at the 1991 annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. Using the best available sources, he surveyed the global situation and estimated that only 10% of languages seem safe in the long term, up to 50% may already be moribund, and the remainder are in danger of becoming moribund by the end of this century. Twenty years later, better information is available. In this paper we use information from the latest edition of the Ethnologue (Lewis 2009), plus information being gathered for the next edition, to offer an update to the global statistics on language viability. Specifically the data for this study come from our work to estimate the level of every language on earth on the EGIDS or Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (Lewis and Simons 2010). Our finding is that at one extreme more than 70% of languages are extinct or moribund in Australia, Canada, and the United States, but at the other extreme less than 10% of languages are extinct or moribund in sub-Saharan Africa. Overall we find that 19% of the world's living languages are no longer being learned by children. We hypothesize that these radically different language endangerment outcomes are explained by Mufwene's (2002) observations concerning the effects of settlement colonization versus exploitation colonization on language ecologies. We also speculate that urbanization may have effects like settlement colonization and may thus pose the next great threat to minority languages.
AN ANALYTICAL STUDY ON DEATH OF A LANGUAGES
2018
It is predictive that the biological function exercised by the voice box translates a noise into intelligible expressions. [1] Representation of experience by words was explored at length by Gorgias and Plato in ancient Greece. Rousseau went on to illustrate that language stemmed from emotions, whereas Kant considered that language emerged from careful and logical thought. The structuralism view of language was first introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure. [2] Predictive analytics methods give a rough judgement that of the available and in-use languages a large majority are likely to be dead by 2100. How does it happen? Is it due to cultural invasion, scientific adjustment or technological convenience? It is not very difficult to prevent a language from disintegrating or becoming endangered. Desire of a community to conserve its language has numerous options available. Take for example Modern Hebrew which was revived after generations modified and adaptable to the present requirements.
Language Endangerment: What are the Sociolinguistic Consequences?
Language endangerment and Language shift have long been a topic of discussion among sociolinguists, linguists, language planners, educators, and others. The result has been an extensive literature about the causes, processes, symptoms, and results of language loss and death (Denison ). Language endangerment and Language shift are socio-political and cultural phenomenon.
Language endangerment, a global phenomenon, is accelerating and 90 percent of the world's languages are about to disappear in 21 st century, leading to the loss of human intellectual and cultural diversity. When Europe colonized the New World and the South, an enormous body of cultural and intellectual wealth of indigenous people was lost completely and it was appreciable only through the language that disappeared with it (Hale, 1998). This research deals with the problem of language loss in the world and seeks answer to critical questions: What does language extinction mean for humankind? What is to be done to save languages from loss? Some scholars suggest that linguists should find solutions whereas others disagree that it is linguists' responsibility to maintain and preserve the currently disappearing languages. Moreover, the research indicates that not only language specialists are participating in this process but also general public, particularly members of the communities whose languages are declining, are contributing their efforts in saving languages from loss.
Language Problems and Language Planning. Vol. 38, No. 1. Pp. 98-100., 2014
F. Xavier Vila edited this volume of 9 studies on medium-sized languages, i.e., languages that are neither majority nor minority languages. In the first chapter, Vila and Vanessa Brexta discuss the difficulties in defining what a medium-size language is. Ultimately, the decide that such a language has between one million and 25 million speakers. They also point out that a medium-size language communities in socioeconomically developed communities, and these language communities are not experiencing large-scale language shift. The studies in this anthology derive from a series of three workshops held at the University of Barcelona in 2009. This collection features studies on the following languages: Danish, Estonian, Latvian, Hebrew, Czech, and Slovene. The final chapter asks if Catalan is a medium-sized language.