Many people think we shouldn’t. There is a widely held and popular – but nonetheless misconceived – belief that any reduction in the number of languages is a benefit for mankind, and not a tragedy at all. Several strands of thought feed this belief. One reflects the ancient tradition, expressed in several mythologies but most famously in the Biblical story of Babel, that the proliferation of languages in the world was a penalty imposed on humanity, the reversal of which would restore some of its original perfectibility. In an ideal world, according to this view, there would be just one language, which would guarantee mutual understanding, enlightenment, and peace. Any circumstances which reduce the number of languages in the world, thereby enabling us to move closer to this goal, must therefore be welcomed.

There are two intractable difficulties with this view. The first is the naivety of the conception that sharing a single language is a guarantor of mutual understanding and peace, a world of new alliances and global solidarity. The examples to the contrary are so numerous that it would be impracticable to list them. Suffice it to say that all the major monolingual countries of the world have had their civil wars, and that as one reflects on the war-zones of the world in the last decades of the twentieth century, it is striking just how many of them are in countries which are predominantly monolingual – Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Burundi (the latter two standing out in Africa in their lack of multilingualism). It is, in short, a total myth that the sharing of a single language brings peace, whichever language it might be. It is difficult to see how the eventual arrival of English, Esperanto, or any other language as a global lingua franca could eliminate the pride that leads to ambition and conflict – any more than it did in the supposed unilingual pre-Babelian era.

In 1992, linguists attending the International Linguistics Congress in Quebec agreed the following statement:

UNESCO did respond. At a conference in November 1993, the General Assembly adopted the ‘Endangered Languages Project’ – including the ‘Red Book of Endangered Languages’ – and a few months later a progress report observed:

Several significant events quickly followed. In 1995 an International Clearing House for Endangered Languages was inaugurated at the University of Tokyo. The same year, an Endangered Language Fund was instituted in the USA. The opening statement by the Fund’s committee pulled no punches:

Faced with a problem of such worldwide scale, and such a limited time frame in many instances, the need for cool, careful, and coordinated action is evident. There are now enough case studies of revitalization from around the world to show that language loss is not always inevitable. A great deal can be done – and already has been done – by indigenous communities, local support groups, and outside bodies. Professional linguistic concern grew significantly during the 1990s, as has been noted in the Preface. International awareness of language rights also took a significant step forward in that decade, notably with the formulation of the Barcelona Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights. At the same time, the increased attention has resulted in the true complexities of the situation beginning to be unravelled. The notion of language maintenance is rarely as straightforward as it seems. Even the relatively transparent task of making a linguistic recording of an endangered language turns out to have many hidden pitfalls. We therefore need to review the situation as a whole, without minimizing the difficulties. As one research team has remarked:

The remainder of this book tries to answer that question. So where do we begin?

The preceding two chapters have raised a number of general considerations which are involved in the early stages of working with an endangered language. Chapter 3 drew attention to the range of factors which cause a language to decline; chapter 4 emphasized the effect of this process on people’s attitudes. Both perspectives are needed before we are in a position to make informed decisions about when and how to intervene, in order to reverse language shift – or indeed about whether intervention is practicable or desirable.

Our decisions may be informed, but they are not always based on principles that are fully understood. There is still so much that we do not know. What motivates the members of a community to work for their language? Why do some communities become so involved and others do not? Sometimes the reasons are very clear: for example, a powerful combination of political and religious factors explain the rebirth and ongoing maintenance of Hebrew in modern Israel. But most endangered situations do not permit easy analysis. Nor is the range of factors and how they interact completely understood. We know a great deal about why languages become endangered and die, and why people shift from one language to another (see chapter 3), but we still know very little about why they are maintained, and why people stay loyal to them. Surprising cases of language maintenance, even in the most adverse of circumstances, are encountered. The Tewa of Arizona are an example: they have long been a small group within the dominant Hopi community, and yet their language has been strongly maintained. In trying to explain this, linguists have noted the Tewa’s real concern over stylistic consistency in the use of ceremonial and religious speech, even to the extent of physically punishing anyone who might make use of non-Tewa expressions; also, a spirit of linguistic tolerance is strongly present among the Hopi. But it is difficult to find ways of quantifying such notions as ‘real concern over consistency’ and ‘strong presence of tolerance’, and much of the commentary in the research literature still remains impressionistic.

The phrase ‘language death’ sounds as stark and final as any other in which that word makes its unwelcome appearance. And it has similar implications and resonances. To say that a language is dead is like saying that a person is dead. It could be no other way – for languages have no existence without people.

A language dies when nobody speaks it any more. For native speakers of the language in which this book is written, or any other thriving language, it is difficult to envision such a possibility. But the reality is easy to illustrate. Take this instance, reported by Bruce Connell in the pages of the newsletter of the UK Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL), under the heading ‘Obituaries’:

If people care about endangered languages, they will want something to be done. But before we can decide what can or should be done, we need to understand the reasons for the endangerment in the first place. Why, then, are languages dying, and in such numbers? And is the rate of language death increasing?

Languages have always died. As cultures have risen and fallen, so their languages have emerged and disappeared. We can get some sense of it following the appearance of written language, for we now have records (in various forms – inscriptions, clay tablets, documents) of dozens of extinct languages from classical times – Bithynian, Cilician, Pisidian, Phrygian, Paphlagonian, Etruscan, Sumerian, Elamite, Hittite … We know of some 75 extinct languages which have been spoken in Europe and Asia Minor. But the extinct languages of which we have some historical record in this part of the world must be only a fraction of those for which we have nothing. And when we extend our coverage to the whole world, where written records of ancient languages are largely absent, it is easy to see that no sensible estimate can be obtained about the rate at which languages have died in the past. We can of course make guesses at the size of the population in previous eras, and the likely size of communities, and (on the assumption that each community would have had its own language) work out possible numbers of languages. On this basis, Michael Krauss hazards that 10,000 years ago, assuming a world population of 5–10 million and an average community size of 500–1,000, there must have been between 5,000 and 20,000 languages. He opts for 12,000 as a middle estimate of the highest number of languages in the world at any one time. There are some 6,000 languages now. But no one knows how many languages have come and gone within this period, and how many new languages to allow for, to set off against the apparent loss of some 6,000. Nor do we know whether the rate of language change has been constant over these long periods of time, or punctuated by periods of rapid shift and decline, though the topic has been much debated.

This list contains all the organizations mentioned in the body of this book, plus a selection of other points of contact around the world.

1. Ad Hoc Committee on Endangered Languages

2. c/o Université de Québec à Montréal, CP 8888, succ. Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 3P8, Canada.

3. M366050@er.uqam.ca

1. Committee on Endangered Languages and their Preservation (CLEP)

2. c/o Linguistic Society of America, 1325 18th Street, NW, Washington DC 20036–6501

3. lsa@lsadc.org

1. The Endangered Language Fund, Inc

2. c/o Doug Whalen, Department of Linguistics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA

3. whalen@haskins.yale.edu

4. http://sapir.ling.yale.edu/~elf/study.html

1. Endangered-Languages-L Electronic Forum

2. c/o: Mari Rhydwen, Graduate School of Education, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Perth, WA 6009, Australia

3. majordomo@coombs.anu.edu.au

4. mrhydwen@decel.ecel.uwa.edu.au

1. Ethnologue

2. c/o Barbara Grimes, Summer Institute of Linguistics Inc, International Linguistics Center, 7500 West Camp Wisdom Road, Dallas, TX 75236, USA

3. http://www.sil.org/ethnologue

1. European Bureau of Lesser Used Languages

2. c/o Information Centre, rue Saint-Josse 49B / Sint-Jooststraat 49B, 1030 Brussels

3. fax: (+32 2) 2181974

1. The Foundation for Endangered Languages

2. c/o Nicholas Ostler, Batheaston Villa, 172 Bailbrook Lane, Bath BA1 7AA.

3. nostler@chibcha.demon.co.uk

4. http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Philosophy/CTLL/FEL

1. Gesellschaft für bedrohte Sprachen (Society for Endangered Languages)

2. c/o Hans-Jürgen Sasse, Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität zu Köln, 50923 Köln, Germany

3. GBS@uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifs/pages/d_agbs.htm

1. Institute for the Preservation of the Original Languages of the Americas

2. c/o Executive Director, 713 1/2A Canyon Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, USA

3. ipola@roadrunner.com

1. International Clearing House for Endangered Languages (ICHEL)

2. c/o Kazuto Matsumura, Department of Asian and Pacific Linguistics, Institute of Cross-Cultural Studies, University of Tokyo, Hongo 7–3–1, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113, Japan

3. kmatsum@tooyoo.L.u-tokyo.ac.jp

4. http://www.tooyoo.L.u-tokyo.ac.jp

1. Language Documentation Urgency List

2. c/o Dietmar Zaefferer, Institut für Deutsche Philologie, Universität München, Schellingstr. 3, D-80799, München, Germany

3. ue303bh@sunmail.lrz-muenchen.de

1. List Endangered-Languages-L

2. http://carmen.murdoch.edu.au/lists/endangered-languages-l/ell-websites.html

1. Logosphere

2. c/o David Dalby, Observatoire Linguistique, Hebron, Dyfed SA34 0XT, UK

3. logosphere@aol.com

1. Network on Endangered Languages

2. c/o T. Matthew Ciolek, Computer Centre, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

3. coombspapers@coombs.anu.edu.au