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New research centre to save 'lost languages'

Polly Curtis

24 March 2004 - A language is lost every two weeks, according to the head of a new centre for research into endangered languages, which is being launched today.

People are increasingly choosing to teach their children more commonly used languages in a bid to help them gain work in later life, their research says. As a result half of the 6,500 languages spoken around the world are anticipated to disappear in the next century - a rate of one every fortnight.

The new centre for research into endangered languages at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, which is backed by £20m grant, is being launched today by the Princess Royal.

Researchers will use the money to record and archive endangered languages and look at ways of encouraging people to retain their indigenous languages.

Professor Peter Austin director of the Endangered Languages Academic Project, said: "The main reason that languages are lost is that communities are switching to speaking other people's language - they adopt a language of a local area.

"Many people in east Africa are opting for Swahili; Indians in central and south America speak Spanish to their children to give them an economic advantage."

The professor, who himself speak three Australian aboriginal languages as well as two Indonesian dialects, English, some Japanese, German and Italian, added: "The tragedy is that although people may decide now that it's better to switch, in a generation or two, their children or grandchildren will regret that. We're trying to help people remain multi-lingual by adding languages rather than losing them."

Along with the endangered languages the centre aims to preserve large elements of the disappearing cultures. Archived material which Professor Austin has gathered so far includes interviews with the last known speaker of Jiwarli, a western Australian Aboriginal dialect, Jack Butler, who died in 1986.

Mr Butler describes his childhood experiences as well as telling traditional aboriginal stories. From between 250 and 270 Australian Aboriginal languages at the time of European invasion, 160 are now extinct; 70 are severely threatened and only 20 are still widely used.

Audio:
Jack Butler the last native speaker of the western Australian aboriginal language Jirwarli, tells a traditional story (streaming real audio)
The translation by Professor Peter Austin (streaming real audio)

Source: The Guardian

related links :

• Moves to save dying languages
  15 March, 2004 - HAMISH ROBERTSON: According to UNESCO, more than half of the world's 6,000 languages are in danger of dying out, ranging from native American languages in the United States to Scottish Gaelic, which is now spoken by only 60,000 or so mostly elderly people. Well, with growing concern about the rapid disappearance of so many languages around the world, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission is beginning a study of Aboriginal languages in Australia.
• Aborigines struggle to find a voice
  7 October 2002 - Guardian - Australia's native languages have drifted towards extinction and it could take generations to revive them, writes David Fickling
• When these two sisters die, a whole language will die with them
  27 September 2002 - The Scotsman - What follows is about wombats. How to catch and cook them, to be more precise. It contains probably every piece of information you will ever want to hear on the subject of hairy-nosed wombats.
• Dictionary gives hope to Aborigines
  13 July, 2001 -Telegraph (UK) - Aboriginal leaders have claimed that the inclusion of the phrase "stolen generation" in the latest edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary amounts to international acknowledgment of their campaign for reparations.
• Demise of world’s vanishing languages
  June 2001 - Scotsman (UK) - There are 6,800 languages spoken in the world today, but, by the end of the century, up to 90 per cent of them could have disappeared.
• Jiwarli stories
• School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

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