Vanishing Languages (Washington Post, Sept. 19, 2007)

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The link below takes you to page A12 in today's Washington Post (Sept. 19, 2007). The article by Rick Weiss is titled 'Vanishing Languages Identified' and the lead is about how Native American tribes are loosing speakers of their languages. Oklahoma is home to reservations for descendants of Cherokee, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Kiowa, Comanche and many others.

Click here to see the map of at-risk languages, highlighted in red: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00222.html

The sources are the National Geographic and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. Hotspots (places where language extinction is most dire) are in Eastern Siberia, where there are 23 languages at risk, North-Central Australia with a total of 153 languages, as well as all the Amerindian languages from the Quechua (Kichwa) of Peru and Bolivia to the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington State and British Columbia).

Oddly, none of the at-risk languages of Western Europe (including Spain's Asturian/Asturianu, Galician, Basque or Catalan) are included. Apparently, there are no at-risk languages in Africa either, according to the graphic.

Here is Rick Weiss' article in full. You can also read it online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01751.html

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L'enllaz d'embaxu apaez na paxina A12 del Washington Post de güei (19 sept. 2007). L'articulu tien la firma de Rick Weiss ya ta titulau 'Identifican l.linguas que tan sumiendose' ya entama col feitu que del.las tribus de indios norteamericanos tan perdiendo falantes a esgaya. Oklahoma tien del.las reservas pa descendientes de indios Cherokee, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Kiowa, Comanche ya bien d'outrus.

Facei click eiqui pa echar güeyada al mapa de las l.linguas que tan adicadas a sumise: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00222.html

La fonte pa la documentacion nesti articulu ia'l National Geographic ya'l Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. Los l.lugares a riesgo (rexones au las l.linguas tan sumiendose abondo rapido) tan al este de Siberia con 23 l.linguas, nel norte-centro d'Australia con 153, asina como las l.linguas amerindias como per exemplu el Quechua (Kichwa) falao en Peru ya Bolivia, ya las l.linguas de reservas indias nel Pacifico Norueste talos como las d'Oregon, estau de Washington ya British Columbia.

Peime daque raru que nun punxeran las l.linguas d'Europa oucidental ya España como l'asturianu, el gal.legu, el vascu ou catalan. No cincante a Africa, tampouco paez que heban l.linguas al.lo reculando en falantes...

Eiqui vei l'articulu de Rick Weiss, tamen se pode l.leer na paxina http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01751.html

Vanishing Languages Identified

Oklahoma Is Among Places Where Tongues Are Disappearing

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 19, 2007; A12

Oklahoma has earned the dubious distinction of being one of the five worst "language-loss hotspots" in the world -- places where native languages are going extinct the fastest -- according to an analysis released yesterday.
The Sooner State's inclusion in the global top five is a reminder, researchers said, that the United States has a long history of linguistic diversity and that the problem of language extinctions is not limited to distant lands.
Of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken, about half are expected to disappear in this century, said K. David Harrison, a Swarthmore College linguist and co-director of the Enduring Voices project. That collaboration between the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages of Salem, Ore., assembled the latest statistics on global language loss.
While previous analyses have focused on individual languages that have just one or a few surviving speakers, Harrison and his colleagues took a geographic approach, identifying where in the world languages are disappearing fastest. Oklahoma and nearby areas of the American Southwest, it turns out, have an extremely rich linguistic fabric because of the many Native American tribes that were corralled there in the 1800s.
Today those languages are disappearing by the month, and with them a treasure trove of ecological insights, culinary and medicinal secrets and complex cultural histories, including mythologies that can teach a lot about universal human fears and aspirations, Harrison said.
"It may seem frivolous, but mythological traditions are attempts to make sense of the universe, and the different ways that the human mind has tried to grapple with the unknown and the unknowable are of scientific interest," he said.
Following in the footsteps of early colonialists, but carrying high-quality digital video and audio equipment instead of guns and trinkets, the Enduring Voices project has launched a number of expeditions to document dying languages, about half of which have no written form. Where there is interest in preserving those tongues, it has helped create teaching materials for use in local classrooms.
The venture's analysis, based in part on scholarly research and presented in a telephone news conference yesterday, took three factors into account in identifying the "hotspots": The diversity of languages spoken, the number of living speakers and how old they are, and the extent to which the languages have been documented.
Among those on the brink of extinction in Oklahoma is Yuchi, a language native to the same-named tribe from Tennessee and believed to be unrelated to any other in the world. It is spoken by just a handful of elders because youngsters in government boarding schools were punished if they veered from English. Yuchi tales tell of Earth's creation from water with the help of a crawfish and the emergence of the tribe's forebears from a drop of menstrual blood in the sky.
The other four hotspots are:
Northern Australia, where project members recorded the last known speaker of Amurdag -- a man who remembers about 100 words that he last heard spoken by his now-deceased father.
Central South America, where the Kallawaya of Bolivia have for at least 400 years maintained a secret language about medicinal plants.
The Northwest Pacific Plateau, where there is but a single woman who can still speak Siletz Dee-ni, the last of 27 languages once spoken on Oregon's Siletz reservation.
Eastern Siberia, where a high proportion of the 23 known tongues are unrelated to any other languages in the world.
Language can reveal a lot about how a culture organizes information. In the Paraguayan Lengua language, for example, the word "11" means literally "arrived at the foot, one," meaning "counted 10 fingers plus one toe." The word for "20" means "finished the feet."
In Siberia's Nivkh language, each number can be said 26 ways, depending on what is being counted.
About 80 percent of the world's people speak 83 languages, while about 3,500 languages are spoken by just 0.2 percent of the world's population. Attempts to commune with those minorities can turn unintentionally comedic, said Gregory Anderson, co-director of the Enduring Voices project.
Talking to a woman who is one of the 20 remaining Bardi speakers in Australia, Anderson once mispronounced an "r," which resulted in him asking, "What kangaroo are you from?" instead of "What country are you from?"
No interpreter was needed to understand the Bardi laughter that followed.