2,500 languages threatened with extinction

[Lady L]

I thought this was interesting, wanted to share it in case everyone hasn't seen it.

PARIS (AFP) – The world has lost Manx in the Isle of Man, Ubykh in Turkey and last year Alaska's last native speaker of Eyak, Marie Smith Jones, died, taking the aboriginal language with her.

Of the 6,900 languages spoken in the world, some 2,500 are endangered, the UN's cultural agency UNESCO said Thursday as it released its latest atlas of world languages.

That represents a multi-fold increase from the last atlas compiled in 2001 which listed 900 languages threatened with extinction.
But experts say this is more the result of better research tools than of an increasingly dire situation for the world's many tongues.
Still there is disheartening news.

There are 199 languages in the world spoken by fewer than a dozen people, including Karaim which has six speakers in Ukraine and Wichita, spoken by 10 people in the US state of Oklahoma.

The last four speakers of Lengilu talk among themselves in Indonesia.
Prospects are a bit brighter for some 178 other languages, spoken by between 10 and 150 people.

More than 200 languages have become extinct over the last three generations such as Ubykh that fell silent in 1992 when Tefvic Esenc passed on, Aasax in Tanzania, which disappeared in 1976, and Manx in 1974.

India tops the list of countries with the greatest number of endangered languages, 196 in all, followed by the United States which stands to lose 192 and Indonesia, where 147 are in peril.

Australian linguist Christopher Moseley, who headed the atlas' team of 25 experts, noted that countries with rich linguistic diversity like India and the United States are also facing the greatest threat of language extinction.
Even Sub-Saharan Africa's melting pot of some 2,000 languages is expected to shrink by at least 10 percent over the coming century, according to UNESCO.

On UNESCO's rating scale, 538 languages are critically endangered, 502 severely endangered, 632 definitely endangered and 607 unsafe.

On a brighter note, Papua New Guinea, the country of 800 languages, the most diverse in the world, has only 88 endangered dialects.

Certain languages are even showing signs of a revival, like Cornish, a Celtic language spoken in Cornwall, southern England, and Sishee in New Caledonia.
Governments in Peru, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and Mexico have been successful in their efforts to prevent indigenous languages from dying out.

UNESCO deputy director Francoise Riviere applauded government efforts to support linguistic diversity but added that "people have to be proud to speak their language" to ensure it thrives.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090219...iiGuz68hoDW7oF

[Jägerstaffel]

That's really depressing.

I love language and I feel that they all have their place amongst their cultures.
It's a shame we'll all be speaking a bastardized version of Arabic/English/Spanish one day.

[Treffie]

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Updated 1:31pm 20 February 2009:

Wales News UN warning over Welsh language

Feb 20 2009 by Tomos Livingstone, Western Mail


THE Welsh language faces extinction by the end of the century unless it is given help to survive, the United Nations warned yesterday.

Unesco, the UN’s cultural and educational arm, classified Welsh as “unsafe” in its Atlas of World Languages in Danger.

But the rating is second on a scale of six, moving from “safe” through to “extinct”, and Unesco cited the revival in Welsh usage in the 20th century as “one of the big success stories”.

The organisation rated Manx and Cornish as “extinct”, and put Scots Gaelic in the same category as Welsh.

According to the 2001 census, 582,000 Welsh residents say they can speak the language, around 20.8% of the population. There are an estimated 100,000 Welsh speakers living in the rest of the UK, and about 20-25,000 in Patagonia, Argentina.

The Assembly Government has recently made a formal request to the UK Government for powers over the language to be formally devolved.

The Labour-Plaid administration wants to update the 1993 Welsh Language Act to oblige a greater number of bodies to provide services in Welsh.

By contrast there are around 50,000 Scots Gaelic speakers and just 300 fluent Cornish speakers left. Manx is spoken by an estimated 600 people.

Christopher Moseley, editor- in-chief of the atlas, said: “It would be naive and oversimplifying to say the big ex-colonial languages, English, or French or Spanish, are the killers and all smaller languages are the victims.

“It is not like that; there is a subtle interplay of forces, and this atlas will help ordinary people understand those forces better.”

He added: “In New Zealand, the Maori language has been rescued from near oblivion through the scheme of ‘language nests’ – nurseries where the language is passed on to young children.

“But the biggest success stories are the ones that are operated with state support and infrastructure, such as the reclaiming of Welsh in Wales or Catalan in Catalonia – two regions of Europe that have seen success in our own lifetimes – or the revival of Hebrew as a national language in Israel.”


Meirion Prys Jones, the chief executive of the Welsh Language Board, said: “It’s obvious to anyone living in Wales that the Welsh language is much more apparent today than it was 15 years ago.

“Unesco’s map proves that we’re moving in the right direction, and is a reflection of the desire among the people of Wales to see the language flourish.

“In order to move forward from here and safeguard the language for future generations, the Government needs to promote and invest in the language, giving young people the opportunity to use Welsh in all aspects of their lives.”

Speakers of other Celtic languages have long seen the Welsh model – with a focus on education, service rights and broadcasting – as one to follow. The BBC recently launched Gaelic channel BBC Alba, while there is now a Manx language primary school on the Isle of Man.

Jenefer Lowe, development manager of the Cornish Language Partnership, says reports of its extinction are premature.

“Saying Cornish is extinct implies there are no speakers and the language is dead, which it isn’t.

“Unesco’s study doesn’t take into account languages which have growing numbers of speakers and in the past 20 years the revival of Cornish has really gathered momentum.”

Responding to the report, a spokeswoman for the Assembly Government said: “We recognise that the use of Welsh needs to be promoted and facilitated to ensure that the language continues to thrive.

“We also recognise it needs to continue as a living language in our communities. The Welsh Assembly Government is committed to a bilingual Wales, where people can choose to use Welsh or English.”


IN RECENT weeks the Welsh language has been in the public eye, but seen through a political prism – the push-me-pull-you debate over whether the Assembly, rather than Westminster, should take the lead on language policy.

So it’s a welcome change to see the language in a different context, as part of a world survey of endangered languages.

Unesco rates Welsh as “unsafe”, but that’s not as worrying as it sounds. It has several other ratings of various levels of danger, right down to extinct.

The UN body suggests Welsh needs further help in order to be sure to survive, which is true enough. It also, rightly, points to the upsurge in the use of Welsh since the 1960s as an all-too-rare success story.

The rest of its survey of world languages is sobering. There are around 6,000 languages worldwide, with 200 disappearing in the past three generations. More than 1,500 are on the endangered list.

Unesco rates Manx as officially extinct and does the same for Welsh’s close cousin, Cornish. Understandably, speakers of those tongues are unhappy with Unesco’s assessment; the fate of those languages, however, is a reminder of what could happen to Welsh if indifference or hostility ever became the prevailing orthodoxy again.

The Welsh “model”, if there is such a thing, is being copied elsewhere. A three-pronged approach of Welsh-medium education, official rights to receive public services and universally-available radio and television has helped put the language on a safer footing.

Others are copying that model, with various degrees of success. If Unesco is to be believed, it’s too late for Manx and Cornish; the launch of a Scots Gaelic BBC channel, on the other hand, suggests there is hope.

Development of cross-party consensus on at least not attacking the language, dating back to the 1980s, has also given Welsh space to thrive.

That consensus will be tested by the process of devolving powers over the language to the Assembly. Few will genuinely question the idea of allowing the devolved administration to have control of the issue; the fun and games will come when the Assembly Government brings forward specific plans.

The challenge for Welsh is to move beyond the successful model of the late 20th century and draw up a framework for the 21st century.

Education will still be crucial, as will broadcasting, but the growth of social networking, more fragmented digital media and population flows from rural to urban areas will all need to be considered.

The survival and flourishing of the Welsh language is something we can all be proud of and its future is probably safer than Unesco suggests. But the fate of other Celtic tongues is a reminder that assuming no action is needed will never be the right option.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wa...1466-22970106/