A new
report shows a direct link between disappearing habitats and the loss of
languages. One in four of the world's 7,000 spoken tongues is now at risk of
falling silent for ever as the threat to cultural biodiversity grows
The Guardian, The Observer, John Vidal, Sunday 8 June 2014
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| A Nenets reindeer herdswoman in Russia's Arctic region. Photograph: Staffan Widstrand/WWF (click on picture for graphic depicting global language loss) |
Benny Wenda
from the highlands of West Papua speaks only nine languages these days. In his
village of Pyramid in the Baliem valley, he converses in Lani, the language of
his tribe, as well as Dani, Yali, Mee and Walak. Elsewhere, he speaks
Indonesian, Papua New Guinean Pidgin, coastal Bayak and English.
Wenda has
known and forgotten other languages. Some are indigenous, spoken by his
grandparents or just a few hundred people from neighbouring valleys; others are
the languages of Indonesian colonists and global businesses. His words for
"greeting" are, variously, Kawonak, Nayak, Nareh, Koyao, Aelak,
Selamt, Brata, Tabeaya and Hello.
New Guinea
has around 1,000 languages, but as the politics change and deforestation
accelerates, the natural barriers that once allowed so many languages to
develop there in isolation are broken down.
This is
part of a process that has seen languages decline as biodiversity decreases.
Researchers have established a correlation between changes in local
environments – including the extinction of species – and the disappearance of
languages spoken by communities who had inhabited them.
"The
forests are being cut down. Many languages are being lost. Migrants come and
people leave to find work in the lowlands and cities. The Indonesian government
stops us speaking our languages in schools," says Wenda.
According
to a report by researchers Jonathan Loh at the Zoological Society of London and David Harmon at the George Wright Society, the steep declines in both languages
and nature mirror each other. One in four of the world's 7,000 languages are
now threatened with extinction, and linguistic diversity is declining as fast
as biodiversity – about 30% since 1970, they say.
While
around 21% of all mammals, 13% of birds, 15% of reptiles and 30% of amphibians
are threatened, around 400 languages are thought to have become extinct in the
same time.
New Guinea,
the second-largest island in the world, is not just the world's most
linguistically diverse place, it is also one of the most biologically abundant,
with tree-climbing kangaroos, birds of paradise, carnivorous mice, giant
pigeons, rats bigger than domestic cats and more orchid species than any other
place on the planet.
Today, both
its wildlife and its languages are endangered. According to linguist and author
Asya Pereltsvaig, the language of Bo is spoken by 85 people, Ak by 75 and Karawa
by only 63. Likum and Hoia Hoia have around 80 speakers, and Abom just 15.
Guramalum in New Ireland Province had at the last count only three speakers and
Lua is almost certainly extinct, with a single speaker recorded in 2000.
Ironically,
Lua is now the name of a successful computer programming language.
More than
half of New Guinea's and one in four of the world's remaining languages are
threatened, says Jonathan Loh. This compares with estimates that suggest a
quarter of all mammals, a third of all sharks and rays and one in seven bird
species are endangered.
"There
are extraordinary parallels between linguistic diversity and
biodiversity," says Loh. "Both are products of evolution and have
evolved in remarkably similar ways, and both are facing an extinction
crisis."
But exactly
why there should be such a close link between languages and biological
diversity is unclear, even though it was noticed by Darwin. "Places of
high diversity, especially tropical forests, have always been known to have
high linguistic diversity, whereas tundra and deserts have low diversity,"
says Loh. "It is possible in some way that higher biodiversity is capable
of supporting greater cultural diversity. The explanation seems to be that both
biological and cultural diversity depend on the same environmental factors such
as temperature and rainfall."
Conservationists
fear that the loss of species due to man's activities is accelerating. And
linguists say that the wealth of the world's human languages is now safeguarded
by very few indigenous peoples, most of whom live precarious lives in
developing countries.
Of the
7,000 languages spoken worldwide, half now have fewer than 10,000 speakers, and
these 3,500 languages are spoken by only 0.1% of the world's population –
equivalent to a city about the size of London. These eight million people are
now responsible for keeping the wealth of human cultural history alive, says
the report.
At the
other end of the spectrum, because of colonisation, globalisation and the
worldwide move to cities in the last 30 years, a handful of global languages
increasingly dominates: 95% of the world's population speaks one of just 400
languages, each spoken by millions of people, and 40% of us speak one of just
eight languages: Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali,
Russian and Japanese.
"We
are losing the richness of human diversity, becoming more and more similar. The
languages we speak define how we think and understand the world," says
Mandana Seyfeddinipur, director of the endangered languages archive at the
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
"The
loss of human culture is frightening," says Loh. "Nearly all the
threatened languages are spoken by indigenous peoples and, along with the
languages, the traditional knowledge of these cultures is being forgotten. The
names, uses, and preparation of medicines, the methods of farming, fishing and
hunting are disappearing, not to mention the vast array of spiritual and
religious beliefs and practices which are as diverse and numerous as the
languages themselves."
Loh and
Harman argue that if you want to save nature it may be vital to conserve
cultures too. "The vast store of knowledge that has evolved and
accumulated over tens of thousands of years could be lost in the next 100
years," says Harman. "While linguists have made efforts to archive as
many of the endangered languages as possible, and ethnobiologists have
attempted to record the traditional use of plants, the most important
conservation takes place on the ground as part of a living culture."
"As we
lose rare indigenous languages we lose the cultures and all the knowledge that
they contain. The knowledge of indigenous people is phenomenal.
Conservationists should make use of it," says Loh.
The authors
have developed an "index of linguistic diversity" which shows that
the fastest declines have taken place in the Americas and Australia. Languages
spoken in Africa, Asia and Europe are faring better. For biodiversity, the
fastest rates of decline have occurred in the Indo-Pacific region, Latin
America and sub-Saharan Africa.
"Species
populations in North America, Europe and northern Asia have been more stable.
Biodiversity has declined most rapidly in the tropics, but remained steady in
temperate regions.
"However,
linguistic diversity has declined rapidly in the new world [Americas] but more
slowly in the old world," says Harman.
The
explanation for the different speeds of decline, they say, lies with the
threats that both languages and species face. "Habitat loss and
degradation is the greatest threat for species, and since 1970 most has taken
place in the tropics. In the developed world most habitat destruction took
place before 1970, so biodiversity loss has flattened out.
"Languages
do not usually go extinct because an entire population of speakers dies out,
but because the speakers of a minority, usually indigenous, language shift to a
more dominant language and, typically within a few generations, lose their
mother tongue.
"Migration,
urbanisation and national unification policies have been the primary drivers of
language shift in Africa, Asia and Europe. In the Americas and Australia, the
primary driver has also been migration, but where the migrants, mainly European,
greatly outnumbered the indigenous populations.
"Ultimately
both biodiversity and linguistic diversity are diminishing as a result of human
population growth, increasing consumption and economic globalisation which are
eroding the differences between one part of the world and another," says
the report.
Benny Wenda
says the link between human culture and biodiversity is clear because it is the
indigenous peoples of the world who have mostly conserved nature.
"If
you fell the trees then you destroy human culture as well as the birds of
paradise. People depend on the forest and the forest has always depended on us.
We are as one."
IT'S ALL
TALK …
Around
7,000 languages are spoken in the world, 90% of which are used by fewer than
100,000 people.
Languages
are grouped into families that share a common ancestry. English is related to
German and Dutch, and they are all part of the Indo-European family of
languages. Romance languages, which include French, Spanish and Italian, come
from Latin.
2,200 of
the world's languages can be found in Asia, while Europe has 260.
The world's
most widely spoken languages by number of native speakers and as a second
language are: Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali,
Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German and French.
Some of the
oldest languages known include Sanskrit, Sumerian, Hebrew and Basque.
Around
2,500 languages are at risk of extinction. One-quarter of the world's languages
are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people.
The United
Nations uses six official languages to conduct business: English, French,
Spanish, Chinese, Russian and Arabic.
Communities
isolated from each other because of mountainous geography sometimes develop
multiple languages. Papua New Guinea has 832 different languages. In Mexico, there
are 68 different indigenous languages, further subdivided into 364 variations.
At least
half of the world's population are bilingual or plurilingual. While there are
"perfect bilinguals", who speak two languages equally well, most
bilinguals do not.
South
Africa has 11 official languages – the most for a single country.
The pope tweets
in nine languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish, Arabic,
Portuguese and Latin.
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