A Tale of Loss: The Growing Importance of Language Conservation
Let us begin with a story.
Sometime in the late 1970s, renounced linguist James Rementer moved to Oklahoma. An elderly woman, Nora Thompson Dean, who owned the property where Rementer took up residence, was one of the last people who could speak Unami, a common dialect of the Lenape languages. When she passed away in 1984, one of the languages spoken by the Native Americans, went silent forever.
Now to put things into perspective, consider that there are approximately 7000 recognized languages in the world but 95% of the world’s population speak not more than 300 of them. According to a report published by the Endangered Languages Project, over 40% of global languages are threatened.
Ethnobiologists, for some time now, have been stressing on the symbiotic relation between languages and traditional ecological knowledge. Together they form a holistic view of the ecosystem. When a language dies, a unique perspective towards the world dies with it. Loss of native languages result in the loss of traditional wisdom, which is crucial to understanding the natural world. It is only now that ecological conservationists are tapping into the vast repository of native knowledge in order to accelerate biodiversity conservation.
Research based on the existing database of human linguistic diversity, shows that language diversity is highest in the biodiversity hotspots across geographies. The study further indicates that nearly two-third of languages spoken by fewer than 10,000 people, can only be found in the high biodiversity wilderness areas. Language conservation, it seems, is essential for the preservation of diverse ecosystems.
But why do languages die?
Undeniably, culture has a huge role to play in it. Through the ages, we have seen some cultures colonize other cultures, suppressing the language of the colonized. Today, over half the world chooses to speak in one of the 20 most widely spoken globally accepted languages, and that is primarily because a large section of the world map was once a colony of some country.
The rise of certain business languages is equally accountable for a lesser adoption of native languages in educational or work spaces, as is the pressure millennials face to assimilate, to maintain social status. Then there is the internet that has consistently encouraged the use of the English language over the decades. The number of non-natives using English to communicate daily are at the brink of surpassing the number of native English speakers.
That’s not all. Languages with little to no written records often die in situ.
Linguists, across geographies are scrambling to save as many disappearing languages as possible. Technologies are being adopted that can help organizations and individuals arrest mass language erosion through documentation and archiving processes.
However, for countries like India, language conservation becomes difficult because of rapid urbanization. For a while now, there has been a steady influx of people from the suburban and rural parts of the country to the metropolitans for better education and employment opportunities. For the ones who are immigrating, the need to adopt a more recognized language becomes a part of adapting to a new lifestyle. More often than not, this results in a loss of language or the creation of a hybrid language, which again is a global phenomenon.
India is home to over 19,500 languages and dialects. There are over 200 distinct ethnic groups in North East of India alone and they speak in more that 220 languages. While the Indian Constitution recognizes only 22 languages as official, considering that over 96% of the population can speak in any one of the classified languages, the remaining languages are gradually dying out due to urbanization and assimilation.
So, what should we be doing?
Quite simply, we should all speak in our native tongue. That could be our first step towards preserving what we still have. For the ones that are already categorized as endangered, the best practice would be to start documenting the languages itself — say a detailed study of the grammar and phonetics. But it shouldn’t stop there. It’s the tongue that we speak that defines who we are. Hence, it becomes crucial to document the lives of the people speaking that tongue as well.
The next step would be actively promoting the language, not just among the newer generation who are undergoing a gigantic cultural transition, but also other people who should be made aware of the other cultures surrounding them. What better way to do this than organize cultural festivals that till date uphold the heritage of these ethnic communities? Parts of the Eastern Himalayas witness a large number of these festivals — say for instance the Paro Tshechu cultural festival of Bhutan, Bihu festival of Assam or Nyokum festival that the Nyishi community of Arunachal Pradesh celebrates. These festivals not only play a significant role in language and cultural conservation of these ethnic groups but also propel tourism in these parts of India.
Government initiatives aimed towards creating tourism opportunities, in spaces inhabited by the indigenous communities, would be a good measure to stop language erosion. It might take a while longer but accommodating and facilitating the use of more native languages for official purposes could also help conserve languages.
Losing a language is synonymous to losing the key testimony of a community’s history, culture, traditions, art and perception about the world. As much as we want to, language resurrection is still theoretical, not a reality.
The onus is now on us to carry forward the heritage of our languages.
This article was written for the Balipara Foundation. The organization works towards ecological conservation and restoration in the Eastern Himalayas. Read more about the Balipara Foundation’s work on their website.
