Dying Languages

Dying Languages

QUIZPlease take out a piece of paper and a pencil or pen. Write your name and

student number at the top of your paper.

1. “Why should endangered languages be saved?"

• What does “endangered” mean?

A.DangerousB.In danger of disappearingC.Not dangerous at allD.Uncommon or unusual

2. Which of the following is a dying language?

• A. English• B. Chinese• C. Manx• D. French

3. Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Cornish, and Manx are languages from

which country?• A. Spain• B. South Africa• C. Hungary• D. The United Kingdom

4. How does the author feel about dying languages?

• A. The government should spend more money to preserve dying languages.

• B. Dying languages are an important cultural treasure.

• C. Dying languages are not very important because nobody speaks them anymore.

• D. We should do everything possible to kill dying languages before they kill us.

5. True or False:

• More people study English as a second language than any other language in the world.

6. True or False

• More people speak Mandarin Chinese than any other language in the world.

7. True or False

• Spanish is the fastest growing language in the world.

8. True or False

• In Ireland, children learn Gaelic in school even if their parents don’t speak it.

• 9. Do you think it is a good idea to learn the language of your ancestors, even if it is a dying language?

Please explain.

• 10. Should the government give money to keep dying languages alive?

Please explain

News Reading Class

Languages Dying

Linguists uncover 'hidden' language in north India• By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times October 6, 2010• Koro is used by 800 to 1,200 people in a remote area. The language had gone

undetected by outsiders because its speakers shared cultural similarities with the speakers of Aka, a key language in the region.

• A previously unknown language has been uncovered in the far reaches of northeastern India, researchers reported Tuesday.

• Koro, a tongue brand-new to the scientific world that is spoken by just 800 to 1,200 people, could soon face extinction as younger speakers abandon it for more widely used languages such as Hindi or English.

• Koro is unlike any language in the various branches of the Tibeto-Burman family, a collection of 400 related languages used by peoples across Asia, according to the two National Geographic fellows who announced the discovery. The findings will be published in the journal Indian Linguistics.

• The researchers, linguists K. David Harrison of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and Gregory D.S. Anderson, director of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages in Salem, Ore., said they are not sure yet how old Koro is or how it developed. But they believe it could yield a wealth of knowledge about the way humans develop and use language.

• The speakers of Koro had remained invisible to outside observers because their bright red garments, the rice beer they made and other details of their lives seemed no different from that of the speakers of Aka, the socially dominant language in the region, Harrison said.

• "There's a sort of a cultural invisibility; they're culturally identical in what they wear, what they eat, the houses they live in.... They just happen to have a different word for everything," Harrison said.

• Koro also blends in because its speakers frequently marry Aka speakers (who number 4,000 to 6,000) and people who use another tongue, Miji (who number 6,000 to 8,000). And because the villages had been largely cut off from the outside world for so long, the languages in the region remain poorly studied.

• "I expect that there are many such hidden languages around the world," said M. Paul Lewis, who edited the 16th edition of "Ethnologue: Languages of the World;" he was not affiliated with the work. "The lesser-known languages quite often are overlooked and understudied."

• Anderson and Harrison, along with Indian colleague Ganesh Murmu, came across Koro by chance in 2008. They previously had identified the area in Arunachal Pradesh state as a hot spot of language diversity. After obtaining a permit to visit the area, they rode for two days into the Himalayan foothills and then crossed a river on a bamboo raft to get to the remotest of the villages.

• The researchers had been told about the so-called dialect of Aka. But when they sat down to record the words of a villager they assumed to be speaking it, they were surprised by the unfamiliarity of the words and could tell this was no mere dialect.

• "We noticed it instantly," Anderson said. "We started with a body-part word list, and there wasn't a single word in common." After further study, they realized that Koro was not only a language in its own right, but one as different from Aka as English is from Russian.

• The linguists say there are still many mysteries they hope to unravel, such as why the speakers don't seem to notice how vastly different their languages are, and how the Koro speakers, who seem to blend in with Aka speakers in every other way, have managed to preserve their distinct language for so long.

• The answers, said the linguists, are probably related to the community's relative isolation from the rest of the world.

• Now globalization is ending that isolation, and it may end Koro's existence, too. In many families, the parents speak Koro while the children speak Hindi, the politically dominant language in India. Few Koro speakers are younger than 20.

• The announcement comes in the same year that India lost the last speaker of Bo, one of the world's oldest languages.

• The endangerment of languages such as Koro threatens more than a loss to history, anthropology and human cognitive studies, Harrison said. Speakers in remote regions that contain rich ecological diversity hold knowledge as yet untapped by science.

• "They've learned to live sustainably in harsh environments. The knowledge they have about the medicinal use of plants is uniquely encoded in a way that cannot be translated," he said.

Why Save Dying Languages?

• “The going idea among linguists and anthropologists is that we must keep as many languages alive as possible, and that the death of each one is another step on a treadmill toward humankind’s cultural oblivion,” writes John McWhorter in the journal World Affairs.

• But, as native Americans demonstrate, the death of language needn’t mean the death of culture, McWhorter argues, and keeping a language artificially alive could be worse:

• At the end of the day, language death is, ironically, a symptom of people coming together. Globalization means hitherto isolated peoples migrating and sharing space. For them to do so and still maintain distinct languages across generations happens only amidst unusually tenacious self-isolation—such as that of the Amish—or brutal segregation. (Jews did not speak Yiddish in order to revel in their diversity but because they lived in an apartheid society.) Crucially, it is black Americans, the Americans whose English is most distinct from that of the mainstream, who are the ones most likely to live separately from whites geographically and spiritually.

• The alternative, it would seem, is indigenous groups left to live in isolation—complete with the maltreatment of women and lack of access to modern medicine and technology typical of such societies.

Endangered ethnic languages -- reviving or archiving?

• by Xinhua writers Zhao Ying and Li Huaiyan • KUNMING, July 29 (Xinhua) -- Wang Zhifen, a 39-year-old woman of the Yi ethnic

minority, does not speak her mother tongue any more. She stopped using it when she left her village in southwest China's Yunnan Province to be educated more than 20 years ago.

• "I have no regrets. Mandarin and English are becoming popular in a rapidly changing society and it's natural for people from ethnic minorities to use suitable languages to communicate better," said Wang, a professor at the Wumayao Anthropological Museum in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, home to 25 ethnic groups.

• Only a few natives of Wang's hometown of Mile County in Honghe Hani and the Yi Autonomous Prefecture still speak their mother tongue. The exotic Yi dialect and the gorgeous handmade dresses of its women are now only heard and seen during festival activities or religious ceremonies, said Wang, who returned to work in June after receiving her doctor's degree at Beijing-based Minzu University of China, formerly known as the Central University of Nationalities (CUN).

• Wang's village has frustrated the Chinese government, which, along with experts, have taken various means to preserve endangered languages, believing that they are an indispensable part of China's diversified ethnic culture.

• PERSEVERING EFFORTS, FRUSTRATING RESULTS • There are approximately 130 different languages of 55 ethnic minority groups in China, but more

than 100 are dying out - and 60 are on the verge of extinction, according to statistics from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Across the world, more than 6,000 languages are disappearing at a rapid rate, and 3,000 of these are in an extremely critical state.

• "Language is an important transmitter of myths, poems, operas and many other forms of art. It disseminates valuable knowledge and life experiences accumulated over the centuries," said Li Ziran, a professor with Ningxia University in northwest China.

• To help preserve the viability and vitality of these languages, the Chinese government has moved to finance academia's efforts to compile books about their linguistics and to collect traditional masterpieces that disappeared from sight shortly after China started economic reforms in the late 1970s.

• Contemporary China has benefited in many ways from this indigenous culture, including the discovery and application of ancient medical prescriptions, Li said.

• "We have found or reproduced more than 30,000 ancient books of various ethnic minorities in Yunnan over 20 years, only one third of the registered masterpieces," said Pu Xuewang, director with the publishing and planning office of ethnic ancient books in Yunnan.

• "The local government has also spent 80 million yuan (11.7 million U.S. dollars) in editing and translating classics of the Dai, Yi and Naxi ethnic people," he said.

• Innovative bilingual courses for children of ethnic background are also having a beneficial effect.

• As of May 2007, more than 6 million students have participated in bilingual courses in 10,000 schools across China, learning approximately 30 different ethnic languages as well as Putonghua (standardised Mandarin), according to statistics from the State Working Committee of Languages and Characters.

• During the same time, more than 2,500 classes teaching only ethnic minority languages have trained more than 1 million students.

• The authorities have also managed to help ethnic groups to retrieve and better understand their native tongues, especially the ones indigenous people could only speak but not write; and those made up of only symbols.

• For instance, the Dongba language native to Yunnan is experiencing growing interest. Experts have invented 2,000 new Dongba characters based on 1,000 retrieved ancient characters while local students are also learning the dying language, said He Shiyong, an official with the Lijiang Ancient City Protection Administration. Lijiang is now a popular tourist destination as well.

• "But many efforts turned out to be irrelevant for people's daily communication needs. A head of a Manchu county in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region even asked me once to check the spelling of Manchu language on his name card," said Pan Shouyong, a Minzu University professor.

• "We have acted like firefighters these years to rescue endangered languages, but the people themselves actually don't care about it. They are more closely linked to a modern way of life and are gradually abandoning traditional methods of communication," he said.

• "It's unrealistic for ethnic groups, who only number several hundred or less, to speak and write in Mandarin outside but resort to their own languages back in the villages," Pan said. "We haven't yet found an effective way to revive dying languages."

• 　　 ARCHIVING A REASONABLE CHOICE? • "We should archive the languages and let people make their own choices," said Georg Pfeffer,

professor with Freie University of Berlin. • The opinion that the death of a language indicates the extinction of an ethnic culture could be

too exaggerated, and the social elite should not force ordinary people to share their views about resurrecting antique languages, said Pfeffer.

• Language is basically, and most importantly, a tool of communication for common people, and its survival or death has been natural selection of the environment. "We should not blame people for not carrying on with a language that becomes less useful," said Latami Dashi, an ethnologist with a research center in Ninglang, Yunnan.

• Indigenous people should not have to shoulder the responsibility of preserving a language just because they are members of an ethnic group, and no one should interfere in their decision-making, Pan said.

• "Rescuing a language requires enormous funding and research efforts. Although Chinese law guarantees ethnic people's cultural rights and the government has enacted preferential policies to do so, is it wise and worthwhile trying to turn an unstoppable natural trend around?" Pan asked.

• Wang Zhifen said natives of her hometown have a favorite language form -- singing. Through this medium, many songs in the Yi language were passed down from generation to generation and people also created new ones, as did many other ethic clusters.

• "The development of such popular art forms - which will be more effective - should be encouraged," she said.

Clash Over Mandarin’s Ascent in Guangdong• Many residents of Guangdong province, in southeastern China, are

concerned the government is trying to phase out the Cantonese dialect following a proposal by the local leaders to switch the language spoken in a number of television programs to Mandarin.

• In response, at least 1,000 people in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, staged a protest on Sunday, state-run media reported. Su Zhijia, a deputy party secretary in Guangzhou, denied rumors that the proposed plan was part of a government effort to make Cantonese less prominent.

• “The city government has never had such a plan to abandon or weaken Cantonese,” he said, according to the state-run Global Times.

• Local dialects have weakened significantly in recent years, particularly as workers from across the country have flooded cities in Guangdong in search of factory jobs.

• “I stand for multiculturalism, and I strongly oppose the government’s plan to promote Putonghua with administrative means,” said one demonstrator, according to the Global Times. Putonghua is Mandarin for standard Chinese.

• Promoting Mandarin has been a key part of efforts to ensure state stability in recent years. In the country’s restive West, particularly in Tibet and Xinjiang, experts say the focus on Mandarin has been one way of diluting ethnic or regional loyalties. Schools across the country, for example, teach lessons in Mandarin.

• It seems unlikely that the advances of Mandarin in Guangdong is related to similar efforts in Xinjiang or Tibet. Guandong still thrives economically, and with the exception of labor protests in recent years, the region remains relatively stable politically. Nonetheless, the protests in Guangdong underscore regionalism in China. The local officials said Mandarin broadcasts were meant to accommodate tourists and athletes who will travel to the city for the Asian Games in November.

• “We don’t hate Putonghua, and it’s OK for us to speak it in the schools,” said one demonstrator, Alvis Zhao, a 21-year-old college student, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. “But the government has gone too far with its plan to use more Putonghua on local TV channels.”

Cantonese set to carry on as officials quash rumors

• GUANGZHOU - A senior city official in the southern city of Guangzhou has reaffirmed that no action will be taken to scrap Cantonese in favor of Mandarin, and warned those who spread rumors or try to organize illegal rallies will be punished according to the law.

• Local residents, visitors and tourists alike are fully able to speak both Cantonese and Mandarin in Guangzhou, Ouyang Yongsheng, deputy director of the general office of the Guangzhou city government, said at a press conference on Thursday.

• The city government, he said, would never seek to marginalize a dialect that has been spoken by local residents for thousands of years. "Instead, the city government will continue to spare no effort to promote Yueju, Cantonese opera, and Cantonese pop music in the coming years," he said.

• The opera, which is more than 160 years old, has arias that are sung in the distinctive Cantonese dialect and the accompanying music is native to the area.

• Ouyang said the rumor (of eliminating Cantonese to promote Mandarin) was based on falsehoods and that those found responsible for spreading the rumor will be duly punished.

• Sources from within the Guangzhou police said a suspect, surnamed Yu, who reportedly spread the rumor online to call people to attend a rally in support of Cantonese last Sunday, had been placed under a five-day detention.

• Yu, a native of Central China's Hubei province, claimed online that more than 20,000 residents would attend the rally, which had received local police approval, according to the police.

• Ouyang said that there were actually only hundreds of people gathered in the Jiangnanxi metro station in the city's Haizhu district from 4 pm to 7 pm on Sunday to voice their support for Cantonese.

• Police later dispersed the gathering for reasons of security.• Police officials said they had never received any application for the rally in support of Cantonese.• Ouyang is the second senior official from the city government to voice his support for Cantonese.• Early this month, Su Zhijia, deputy Party secretary of Guangzhou, told the media that the city

government never had any plans to abandon or dilute Cantonese.• Su's remarks follow a proposal put forward earlier his month by members of the Guangzhou

Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) asking Guangzhou TV to air programs currently broadcast in Cantonese in Mandarin on the station's two main channels.

• Ouyang said the proposal, which had been misunderstood, was just a suggestion, not an administrative order

• Guangzhou TV had promised not to give up its Cantonese channels and programs, which are now pulling in higher audience ratings in response to the proposal, he said.

• A senior executive from Guangzhou TV said the station would continue to do what they can to broadcast programs in both Cantonese and Mandarin in the coming months.

• Wu Shenda, a Guangzhou white-collar worker, said many local residents have become used to watching Cantonese TV channels and programs.

• "The government should try to protect the city's unique culture and language, while taking efforts to promote Mandarin, as the two can coexist in the city," Wu said.

• According to a poll on the official website of the CPPCC's Guangzhou committee, 80 percent of the 30,000 respondents are against withdrawing Cantonese from local TV channels.

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