The Last Speakers
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Document it. Linguists typically embrace documentation, with the knowledge that even if all speakers die out, a language can, with great difficulty, be reclaimed from written records or recordings. But some indigenous communities feel documentation is exploitative or does not serve their interests. Some resist it as an unreasonable burden on the elders, or as benefiting only outsiders. Some say that having their language only in recorded media would be the ultimate triumph of colonialism—the language would have been captured and placed in an archive; it would be better to have it disappear entirely than to suffer that fate. As speakers themselves take on a greater role in documentation, exerting ownership and control over their linguistic and intellectual property, we can hope for a time when documentation will always show positive effects that support revitalization.
THERE ARE MANY reactions people have to language loss, and diverse strategies for addressing it. Some blame others, assigning culpability to schools and governments. Others blame themselves, feeling they have failed. Some stick to tradition, while others innovate. And all over the world, a growing movement of language activists lobbies, promotes, teaches, records, speaks, and renews.
There are many strategies for saving a language, and enterprising speakers are using all of these methods. We may not know for decades which strategies succeed. But we can observe and admire their efforts, and perhaps as scientists or outsiders contribute to their cause.
GLOBALIZATION: GOOD AND BAD
Globalization and technology affect the fates of small languages in surprising ways. Tyler Cowen, in Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World’s Cultures, argues that we are all enriched by the market forces that bring us new goods, services, and ideas. “If we consider the book,” he writes, “paper comes from the Chinese, the Western alphabet comes from the Phoenicians, the page numbers come from the Arabs and ultimately the Indians and printing has a heritage through Gutenberg, a German, as well as through the Chinese and Koreans. The core manuscripts of antiquity were preserved by Islamic civilization and, to a lesser extent, by Irish monks.”9
Cowen’s view of the market operates at the elevated level of empires and nation-states, entirely neglecting the thousands of smaller peoples and cultures that comprise them. Occasionally, we find breakthrough phenomena such as Tuvan throat singing, where a cultural product from a tiny nation becomes a globally famous and valued art form. More often, the process goes in the other direction, where art forms valued by large nations become adopted by thousands of smaller cultures who, even though they may improve on the original, enjoy no reciprocal exchange. For example, nothing from Aka culture is borrowed back into American culture as the Aka absorb hip-hop. Americans are deprived, in this one-way cultural exchange, of partaking of the knowledge and cultural richness of the Aka.
More powerful nations wield greater influence; they exert a gravity on smaller cultures. Individuals within these smaller cultures may creatively resist by appropriating, changing, altering, and reinterpreting. A New Guinea tribesman’s ceremonial feather headdress may contain bright strips of tin cut from a Coca-Cola can. Tyler Cowen’s real argument is that an exchange of cultural ideas (piggybacking onto globalize trade relations) promotes greater diversity and thus a higher quality of ideas and arts. He is making an argument for the value of diversity, and showing that globalization (as it plays itself out in greater trade, enhanced communication, more urbanization, and mixing of peoples) enriches us all. He argues, counterintuitively, that globalization culminates not in a “homogenized pap” of sameness, but rather in a richer, more varied mosaic of ideas. True, we may all end up listening to hip-hop performed in hundreds of different languages, but by that point, it is no longer the same hip-hop—instead, it is a much richer, deeper, more culturally diverse art form.
The downside to globalization occurs when big languages crush small languages and the knowledge they contain. The most common vector for this is national education systems. Where a curriculum planned in Lima or Mexico City or Moscow is imposed on all schools across the land, enshrining one set of received knowledge in textbooks, it effectively discounts any alternative ways of knowing.
An upside to globalization is that small language communities around the world can now communicate and exchange ideas. The Siletz of Oregon can travel to Hawaii or New Zealand to observe a successful language-revitalization effort. The Ho of India can petition to have their bizarre alphabet included into the Unicode standard and can access a Ho talking dictionary website hosted in the United States. Such communities can cleverly leverage all the modern technologies, and they can learn that they are not alone in their struggle.
A fully standardized product—say, the McDonald’s Big Mac—is more “global” than a local specialty such as Kansas City barbecue. Why? Because the latter relies on strictly local knowledge. A cook needs more knowledge and skill and expertise, learned through practice and mentoring, to prepare Kansas City barbecue than she does to produce an assembly-line McDonald’s meal that was planned in a central facility to be absolutely the same, regardless of locality.
No matter how widely a language may expand, it still becomes localized, because language is endlessly adaptive. There are so many different varieties of English, yet each has local traits that are sometimes baffling to outsiders. In India, the phrase “by and by” is common in everyday conversation, but may be puzzling to speakers of American English (it means “soon”). In Britain, words like “twee” and “right the way” are obtuse to Americans, while an Americanism like “spunk” is a vulgarity to Britons. Even within American dialects, localisms abound. Pennsylvanians tend to say “down the shore” and “yinz,” and New Yorkers say “wait on line” or “uptown,” while Tennesseans say “fixin’ to” or “might could”—all expressions that can cause puzzlement outside the local region. These are all minor local adaptations, and they are not going to disappear anytime soon. Research shows that the varieties of American English are continuing to diverge rather than converging on a norm.
Clearly the forces of localization are powerful in languages, so perhaps we should not worry about globalization at all. In an imaginary future, English will continue to expand, as will Chinese and Arabic, yielding a trilingual world. But at the same time, English, Chinese, and Arabic will branch into hundreds of local varieties, perhaps only connected by a kind of newscaster-speak or written form that is comprehensible across the dialects. We would live in a world of new and superficial language diversity, having lost deep bodies of knowledge when the other 6,997 languages vanished.
The push-back against globalization in the form of language revitalization will be one of the most interesting social trends to observe over the coming decades. Its outcome will have profound consequences for the intellectual capacity of our species, and for the state of human knowledge. As I have followed the lives and stories of the last speakers described in this book, I hear their message loud and clear: We value our knowledge, we value our languages, we have something to contribute. It would be incredibly shortsighted for us, in our Western industrialized societies, to think that because we have put men on the moon and split the atom, we have nothing to learn from people who just a generation ago were hunter-gatherers in a remote wilderness. What they know—which we’ve forgotten or never knew—may someday save us. We need to hear this message, over and over, in 7,000 different ways of speaking. Let’s listen, while we still can.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK IS THE RESULT of years of research that was generously supported, mentored, and assisted by many people. I thank Dr. Gregory Anderson of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages for years of inspiring collaboration in diverse locales.
The Enduring Voices Project—a joint effort of the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages—made possible the expeditions and research described in this book. The project was initiated at National Geographic by Terry Garcia, Dr. Wade Davis, and Chris Ranier, and fun
ding was generously provided by Lucy Billingsley, Lisa Duke, Joanie Nasher, and the estate of Michael O’Donnell.
Funding for my research was granted by the National Science Foundation, Swarthmore College, Yale University, the Volkswagen Stiftung, the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project, IREX, the Genographic Legacy Fund, and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages.
I extend my heartfelt thanks to people who helped me in various ways during the writing: Garrett Brown, John Paine, Dr. Stephen Gluckman, Jeremy Fahringer, and John Williams.
A portion of the proceeds from this book will support language revitalization.
GLOSSARY
Dialect
Any spoken variety of a language, of no less interest or value than any other variety. As a language changes, its dialects may diverge and eventually become separate languages (e.g., Spanish and French evolved from dialects of Latin). The point at which a dialect becomes a language cannot be determined precisely. Linguists use the criterion of mutual intelligibility (see below) to determine whether two language varieties are dialects of a single language or are distinct languages. But social factors and ethnic identity must also be recognized as partly determining the boundaries among languages.
Endangered Language
A language at risk of extinction. Signs that a language is endangered include a relatively small number of speakers, declining numbers of speakers, and speakers all above a certain age (that is, children are not learning the language).
Grammar
The patterns by which language is formed. For linguists, what is grammatical is based on real-world use. If a group of people use and understand a phrase, it is grammatical for their dialect. This differs from the traditional idea that there is only one “correct” way to speak. In linguistics, only sentences that no native speaker would use (e.g., “John to went my over house”) are judged as ungrammatical.
Language Archive
A repository that safeguards recordings of languages in various media and makes them available to users.
Language Death
A popular metaphor describing the situation when a community gradually stops using its heritage language and no longer passes it on to the children. A “dead” language that has been documented and recorded is sometimes termed a “sleeping” language. These languages may be awakened or revived through revitalization efforts.
Language Documentation
Recording of the linguistic and cultural information found in a language.
Language Prestige
Positive value placed on a language or features of a language. Often a language or a language variety is considered prestigious when it is spoken by those in power.
Language Revitalization
Actions and policies to promote and increase the use of a language, with the goal of stopping or reversing its decline.
Language Revival (or Reclamation)
An attempt to bring back a language that has already lost all its speakers, by teaching it to people who will become new speakers.
Language Shift
The most common process in a language’s ceasing to be spoken. Speakers almost invariably shift from a small, local, indigenous language to a national or global language. As speakers use the language of prestige (see language prestige) more often, they stop passing on the indigenous language to children. This leads to its death.
Linguistics
The scientific study of language, and an academic discipline taught at universities.
Moribund Language
A language that will almost certainly become extinct in the near future because no children speak it as their first language. Such languages as Ös and Chemehuevi, with only a few elderly speakers, are moribund.
Mutual Intelligibility
If speakers of two different language varieties can understand one another, their tongues are mutually intelligible and they are probably speaking different dialects of a single language. If two speakers are mutually unintelligible, then they are speaking two different languages.
Native Language
The language or languages learned naturally in early childhood, also called “first language.” This is not always the same as an ancestral language or heritage language, terms which refer to a language that was spoken by a person’s ancestors. For example, the heritage
NOTES
The epigraph is a portion of a longer poem circulated in 2009, written by Prof. John Goulet in memory of Prof. Michael Noonan.
INTRODUCTION
1. Chemehuevi and Johnny Hill Jr., www.chemehuevi.net and www.crit-nsn.gov/crit_contents/government/johnny_hill.shtml.
2. Friedrich A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review XXXV, no. 4. (1945): 519-30 (American Economic Association).
3. E. Müllhäusler, Linguistic Ecology (New York: Routledge, 1996), 166.
CHAPTER 1: BECOMING A LINGUIST
1. Iris Smorodinsky, “Schwas in French: An Articulatory Analysis” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1996); Scott F. Kiesling, “Dude,” American Speech 79, no. 3 (2004): 281–305.
2. The institute is now called SIL International (see www.SIL.org).
3. Neil Smith and Ianthi-Maria Tsimpli. The Mind of a Savant: Language Learning and Modularity. (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 1995).
CHAPTER 2: SIBERIA CALLING
1. “Castrén,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (1910–11). See also Anna Stammler-Gossmann, “A Life for an Idea: Matthias Alexander Castrén,” Polar Record 45, no. 234 (2009): 193–206.
2. Mendel’s original paper on genetics appeared in 1866; a translation appears in Gregor Mendel, Experiments in Plant Hybridisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946).
3. This section is adapted from my book When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). A similarly complex system of genetic engineering of cattle according to pattern and color is practiced by the Bodi people of Ethiopia; see Katsuyoshi Fukui, “Co-evolution between Humans and Domesticates: The Cultural Selection of Animal Coat-Colour Diversity among the Bodi,” in Redefining Nature, ed. Roy Ellen and Katsuyoshi Fukui (Oxford, England: Berg, 1996), 319–85.
CHAPTER 3: THE POWER OF WORDS
1. United Nations Environment Program, press release, February 8, 2001, “Globalization Threat to World’s Cultural, Linguistic and Biological Diversity.” Viewable at http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=192&ArticleID=2765. This section adapted from my book When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
2. Knut J. Olawsky, “Urarina: Evidence for OVS Constituent Order,” Leiden Papers in Linguistics 2, no. 2 (2005): 43–68.
3. On the hooded seal, see D. M. Lavigne and K. M. Kovacs, Harps and Hoods: Ice Breeding Seals of the Northwest Atlantic (Waterloo, Ontario: University of Waterloo Press, 1988).
4. Brendon Larson, The Metaphoric Web: Environmental Metaphors and Sustainability (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011).
5. Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings. Edited by John Carroll. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964), 213–14.
6. For recent papers on the debate, see D. Genter and S. Goldwin-Meadow, eds., Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).
7. The author acknowledges Dr. Stephen R. Anderson as the source of this apt formulation.
8. Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 64.
9. Igor Krupnik and Dyanna Jolly, eds., The Earth Is Faster Now: Indigenous Observations of Arctic Environmental Change (Fairbanks, AK: Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, 2002), 175.
10. Ibid., 177–78 and following.
11. Conrad Oozeva et al., Watching Ice and Weather Our Way, ed. Igor Krupnik et al. (Washington, DC: Arctic Studies Cente
r, Smithsonian Institution, 2004).
12. Ibid.
13. Joseph W. Bastien, Healers of the Andes: Kallawaya Herbalists and Their Medicinal Plants (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987), 103–4.
14. Mapuche letter to Bill Gates, full text available at http://www.mapuche.info/mapu/ctt050812.html.
15. Bloggers’ comments accessed at http://digg.com/tech_news/Microsoft_Sued_by_Indians_for_Translating_without_Tribal_Elder_Permission?t=3972668 and at http://www.jacobandreas.net/2006/mapuche-indians-sue-microsoft-for-language-piracy. I thank Claire Shelden (Swarthmore College class of 2010) and acknowledge her excellent senior thesis “Linguistic Ownership,” written under my direction, as the source of some of the ideas in this section.
16. Peter Whiteley, “Do ‘Language Rights’ Serve Indigenous Interests? Some Hopi and Other Queries,” American Anthropologist 105 (2003): 712–22.
CHAPTER 4: WHERE THE HOTSPOTS ARE
1. R. A. Mittermeier, N. Myers, and C. G. Mittermeier, eds., Hotspots: Earth’s Biologically Richest and Most Endangered Terrestrial Ecoregions (Mexico City: CEMAX, 1999). The term is also defined in an essay by Ralph and Cristina Mittermeier in Colin Prior, The World’s Wild Places (Richmond Hill, Ontario: Firefly Books, 2006), 126–27.
2. Conservation International, “Impact of Hotspots,” http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org/xp/Hotspots/hotspotsScience/pages/impact_of_hotspots.aspx.