Electronic Highways
Preserving languages
There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.
—Elias Canetti, novelist and playwright
Just like all living things, languages die. Almost one half of the known languages of the world have disappeared in the last 500 years, and the political, social and technological processes leading to language extinction are hastening the decline. Currently, only 10 languages make up more than half the world population’s mother languages, and more than 50 percent of the world’s estimated 6,900 languages are threatened with extinction in the next 100 years.
Languages are important. As the BetterWorld Movement’s page on language preservation reminds us, “they do much more than help people communicate. A language helps define a culture, history and ancestry of a group of people. Once a language is lost, humanity loses a part of our rich culture and heritage. Helping to preserve endangered languages is important to keep traditions alive.”
Ethnologue is a great site to visit if you’re interested in knowing more about the many languages of the world. The Ethnologue database is based on the print publication Ethnologue: Languages of the World (Lockwood Library call #: ReP371.E83). It contains information on 6,909 languages spoken in more than 230 countries. Data can be accessed by language or dialect name, country or territory name, and through a language family tree. The site also contains downloadable maps that show the principal locations of all the languages covered. The Long Now Foundation’s Rosetta Project offers a linguistic record of more than 2,500 languages around the world. This project is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers working to build a publicly accessible digital library of human languages, and its main aims are to produce a modern version of the Rosetta stone, which will allow future academics to understand extinct languages and also provide a platform for linguistic research and education.
While there are no recipes or manuals for language preservation, members of endangered language communities are working with linguists to develop ways to retain their language; such nonprofit organizations as the Endangered Language Fund and Foundation for Endangered Languages have been created with the goal of documenting and supporting endangered language preservation. The Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project at the University of London and the Endangered Language Resource Center at MIT are just two examples of university-based programs dealing with endangered language revitalization.
The UB Libraries have a treasure trove of resources for those who want to delve deeper into the topic of endangered languages—you may want to check out the DVD “The Linguists,” which documents languages on the verge of extinction. To see what books the Libraries hold, type the following keywords into the “subject keywords” field in our Bison Catalog:
•“Endangered languages.”
•“language obsolescence.”
•“language attrition.”
The following library databases and Web sites also should be useful for finding information on threatened languages:
• Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts—LLBA
• MLA International Bibliography
• The Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages.
—Don Hartman, University Libraries
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