Language revival
Encyclopedia
Language revitalization, language revival or reversing language shift is the attempt by interested parties, including individuals, cultural or community groups, governments, or political authorities, to reverse the decline of a language. If the decline is severe, the language may be endangered
, moribund, or extinct
. In these cases, the goal of language revitalization is often to recover the spoken use of the language. Although the goals of language revitalization vary by community and situation, a goal of many communities is to return a language that is extinct or endangered to daily use. The process of language revitalization is the reverse of language death
.
has been an area of study among sociolinguists, including Joshua Fishman
, in recent decades. Reversing language shift involves establishing the degree to which a particular language has been 'dislocated' in order to determine the best way to assist or revive the language.
Ghil'ad Zuckermann
proposes Revival Linguistics as a new linguistic discipline and paradigm. "Zuckermann's term 'Revival Linguistics' is modelled upon 'Contact Linguistics' (
's model for reviving threatened (or dead) languages, or for making them sustainable, consists of an eight-stage process. Efforts should be concentrated on the earlier stages of restoration until they have been consolidated before proceeding to the later stages. The eight stages are as follows:
This model of language revival is intended to direct efforts to where they are most effective and to avoid wasting energy trying to achieve the later stages of recovery when the earlier stages have not been achieved. For instance it is probably wasteful of effort to campaign for the use of the language on television or in government services if hardly any families are in the habit of using the language.
, in his book Language Death, proposes six factors which may help a language to progress. He postulates that an endangered language will progress if its speakers:
s) into a self-sustaining community of several million first language
speakers has happened only once, in the case of the Hebrew language
, now the national language
of Israel
. In this case, there was a unique set of historical and cultural characteristics that facilitated the revival (see Revival of the Hebrew language).
However, during several periods in the past, literary language
s without native speaker
s nonetheless enjoyed great prestige and practical use as lingua franca
s, often counting millions of fluent speakers at a time. In many such cases, a decline in the use of the literary language, sometimes precipitous, was later accompanied by a strong renewal. This happened, for example, in the revival of Latin
in the Renaissance
, and the revival of Sanskrit
in the early centuries A.D. Many of these literary languages, although having few or no native speakers, were far from "dead", and were quite often used even in extemporaneous speech. This type of situation exists to this day in Arabic
-speaking areas, where the literary language (Modern Standard Arabic, a form of the Classical Arabic
of the 6th century A.D.) is taught to all educated speakers and is used in radio broadcasts, formal discussions, etc.
In addition, literary languages have sometimes risen to the level of becoming first language
s of very large language communities. An example is standard Italian
, which originated as a literary language derived from the language of 13th-century Florence
, especially as used by most important Florentine writers such as Dante
and Bocaccio
. This language existed for several centuries primarily as a literary vehicle, with few native speakers; even as late as 1861, on the eve of Italian unification
, the language only counted about 500,000 speakers, many non-native, out of a total population of c. 22,000,000. The subsequent success of the language has been through conscious development, where speakers of any of the numerous Italian languages were taught standard Italian as a second language
and subsequently imparted it to their children, who learned it as a first language.
Note that in the case of Italian, and similar situations such as the eventual dominance of modern German
, Czech
, Finnish
and other languages that originated as largely or purely literary language
s, is that even though these literary languages by themselves had at one point few or no native speakers, they were dialects of existing spoken languages that already had large communities of native speakers — hence the language cannot reasonably be said to have been "dead". Furthermore, many of the speakers who eventually adopted the languages were already speakers of closely related languages (e.g. other Romance languages
or Germanic languages
). The uniqueness of the revitalization of Hebrew is that before its revival, there were no native speakers of any variety of Hebrew, and the early community that led to its revitalization was composed largely of speakers of the unrelated Yiddish language
(a variety of Middle High German
).
Other than Hebrew, there are no cases of completely dead languages revived into communities of larger than a few thousand speakers (often composed largely of enthusiasts, and often not passed on from one generation to the next). The Cornish
, though still used in the home into the 20th century, had spent a century extinct as a visible community language. Its revival started in 1904 and there are now a growing number of speakers, currently in the thousands, some of whom were brought up bilingually. The development of revived Prussian
started in the second half of the 20th century by the work of Vytautas Mažiulis
and others.
Official attempts to revitalise languages under threat from extinction, such as the promotion of Irish
in both the Republic
and Northern Ireland
(see Gaelic revival
), Welsh
in Wales
, Galician
in Galicia, Basque
in Basque Country, and Catalan
in Catalonia
have met with mixed success.
In China, too, a few groups of Manchu language
enthusiasts are trying to revive the language of their ancestors using available dictionaries and textbooks, and even occasional visit to Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County
in Xinjiang
, where the related Xibe language
is still spoken natively.
Some Amerindian groups have attempted to revive moribund languages.
Often the organization reviving the language chooses a particular dialect, even standardizes
one from several variants, and adds new forms, mainly modern vocabulary, through neologisms, extensions of meaning for old words, calque
s from sibling languages (Arabic for Modern Hebrew, Welsh and Breton for Cornish), or plain borrowings from the modern international languages.
Supporters of other variants can feel that the chosen form is not "the real one", and that the original purpose of the revival has been defeated.
, Spain
and Italy
).
In the last few decades, local nationalism
and human rights
movements have made a more multicultural
policy standard in European states; sharp condemnation of the earlier practices of suppressing regional languages was expressed in the use of such terms as "linguicide". Campaigns have raised the profiles of local languages to such an extent that in some European regions, the local languages have acquired the status of official language
s, along with the national language. The Council of Europe
's action in this area (see European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
) is in contrast to the European Union
's granting of official status to a restricted number of official languages (see Languages of the European Union
).
On the other end of the spectrum, Latin
, the learned language in which higher education and academic communication were carried out in Europe for many centuries, thus providing a cultural link to the continent across all of its universities until the aforementioned period, has also been the object of a language revival movement and is precariously growing in number of speakers (cf. Living Latin), although, as a language which is native to no people, this movement has received little support from governments, national or supranational.
around the world. Still others have only a few known speakers; these languages are called endangered languages.
The UN estimates that more than half of the languages spoken today have fewer than 10,000 speakers and that a quarter have fewer than 1,000 speakers and that, unless there are some efforts to maintain them, over the next hundred years most of these will become extinct.
The Endangered Language Fund
is a fund dedicated to the preservation and revival of endangered languages.
Endangered language
An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use. If it loses all its native speakers, it becomes a dead language. If eventually no one speaks the language at all it becomes an "extinct language"....
, moribund, or extinct
Extinct language
An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers., or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication...
. In these cases, the goal of language revitalization is often to recover the spoken use of the language. Although the goals of language revitalization vary by community and situation, a goal of many communities is to return a language that is extinct or endangered to daily use. The process of language revitalization is the reverse of language death
Language death
In linguistics, language death is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language variety is decreased, eventually resulting in no native and/or fluent speakers of the variety...
.
Theory
Reversing language shiftLanguage shift
Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...
has been an area of study among sociolinguists, including Joshua Fishman
Joshua Fishman
Joshua Aaron Fishman, is an American linguist who specializes in the sociology of language, language planning, bilingual education, and language and ethnicity.-Life:...
, in recent decades. Reversing language shift involves establishing the degree to which a particular language has been 'dislocated' in order to determine the best way to assist or revive the language.
Ghil'ad Zuckermann
Ghil'ad Zuckermann
Ghil'ad Zuckermann is an Israeli-Italian-British-Australian linguist, expert of language revival, contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity...
proposes Revival Linguistics as a new linguistic discipline and paradigm. "Zuckermann's term 'Revival Linguistics' is modelled upon 'Contact Linguistics' (
Steps in reversing language shift
Joshua FishmanJoshua Fishman
Joshua Aaron Fishman, is an American linguist who specializes in the sociology of language, language planning, bilingual education, and language and ethnicity.-Life:...
's model for reviving threatened (or dead) languages, or for making them sustainable, consists of an eight-stage process. Efforts should be concentrated on the earlier stages of restoration until they have been consolidated before proceeding to the later stages. The eight stages are as follows:
- Acquisition of the language by adults, who in effect act as language apprentices (recommended where most of the remaining speakers of the language are elderly and socially isolated from other speakers of the language).
- Create a socially integrated population of active speakers (or users) of the language (at this stage it is usually best to concentrate mainly on the spoken language rather than the written language).
- In localities where there are a reasonable number of people habitually using the language, encourage the informal use of the language among people of all age groups and within families and bolster its daily use through the establishment of local neighbourhood institutions in which the language is encouraged, protected and (in certain contexts at least) used exclusively.
- In areas where oral competence in the language has been achieved in all age groups encourage literacy in the language but in a way that does not depend upon assistance from (or goodwill of) the state education system.
- Where the state permits it, and where numbers warrant, encourage the use of the language in compulsory state education.
- Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated, encourage the use of the language in the workplace (lower worksphere).
- Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated encourage the use of the language in local government services and mass media.
- Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated encourage use of the language in higher education, government etc.
This model of language revival is intended to direct efforts to where they are most effective and to avoid wasting energy trying to achieve the later stages of recovery when the earlier stages have not been achieved. For instance it is probably wasteful of effort to campaign for the use of the language on television or in government services if hardly any families are in the habit of using the language.
Factors which help an endangered language to progress
David CrystalDavid Crystal
David Crystal OBE FLSW FBA is a linguist, academic and author.-Background and career:Crystal was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. He grew up in Holyhead, North Wales, and Liverpool, England where he attended St Mary's College from 1951....
, in his book Language Death, proposes six factors which may help a language to progress. He postulates that an endangered language will progress if its speakers:
- increase their prestige within the dominant community
- increase their wealth
- increase their legitimate power in the eyes of the dominant community
- have a strong presence in the education system
- can write down the language
- can make use of electronic technology
Specific examples
Total revival of a "dead" language (in the sense of having no native speakerNative Speaker
Native Speaker is Chang-Rae Lee’s first novel. In Native Speaker, he creates a man named Henry Park who tries to assimilate into American society and become a “native speaker.”-Plot summary:...
s) into a self-sustaining community of several million first language
First language
A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...
speakers has happened only once, in the case of the Hebrew language
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, now the national language
National language
A national language is a language which has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a people and perhaps by extension the territory they occupy. The term is used variously. A national language may for instance represent the national identity of a nation or country...
of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. In this case, there was a unique set of historical and cultural characteristics that facilitated the revival (see Revival of the Hebrew language).
However, during several periods in the past, literary language
Literary language
A literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others...
s without native speaker
Native Speaker
Native Speaker is Chang-Rae Lee’s first novel. In Native Speaker, he creates a man named Henry Park who tries to assimilate into American society and become a “native speaker.”-Plot summary:...
s nonetheless enjoyed great prestige and practical use as lingua franca
Lingua franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
s, often counting millions of fluent speakers at a time. In many such cases, a decline in the use of the literary language, sometimes precipitous, was later accompanied by a strong renewal. This happened, for example, in the revival of Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
in the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
, and the revival of Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
in the early centuries A.D. Many of these literary languages, although having few or no native speakers, were far from "dead", and were quite often used even in extemporaneous speech. This type of situation exists to this day in Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
-speaking areas, where the literary language (Modern Standard Arabic, a form of the Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic , also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times . It is based on the Medieval dialects of Arab tribes...
of the 6th century A.D.) is taught to all educated speakers and is used in radio broadcasts, formal discussions, etc.
In addition, literary languages have sometimes risen to the level of becoming first language
First language
A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...
s of very large language communities. An example is standard Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, which originated as a literary language derived from the language of 13th-century Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, especially as used by most important Florentine writers such as Dante
DANTE
Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
and Bocaccio
Bocaccio
The bocaccio rockfish is a variety of fish found on the western coast of the United States and Canada.Bocaccio may also refer to:*USS Charr , originally designated as Bocaccio...
. This language existed for several centuries primarily as a literary vehicle, with few native speakers; even as late as 1861, on the eve of Italian unification
Italian unification
Italian unification was the political and social movement that agglomerated different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of Italy in the 19th century...
, the language only counted about 500,000 speakers, many non-native, out of a total population of c. 22,000,000. The subsequent success of the language has been through conscious development, where speakers of any of the numerous Italian languages were taught standard Italian as a second language
Second language
A second language or L2 is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue. Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas ....
and subsequently imparted it to their children, who learned it as a first language.
Note that in the case of Italian, and similar situations such as the eventual dominance of modern German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
and other languages that originated as largely or purely literary language
Literary language
A literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others...
s, is that even though these literary languages by themselves had at one point few or no native speakers, they were dialects of existing spoken languages that already had large communities of native speakers — hence the language cannot reasonably be said to have been "dead". Furthermore, many of the speakers who eventually adopted the languages were already speakers of closely related languages (e.g. other Romance languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
or Germanic languages
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
). The uniqueness of the revitalization of Hebrew is that before its revival, there were no native speakers of any variety of Hebrew, and the early community that led to its revitalization was composed largely of speakers of the unrelated Yiddish language
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
(a variety of Middle High German
Middle High German
Middle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...
).
Other than Hebrew, there are no cases of completely dead languages revived into communities of larger than a few thousand speakers (often composed largely of enthusiasts, and often not passed on from one generation to the next). The Cornish
Cornish language
Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...
, though still used in the home into the 20th century, had spent a century extinct as a visible community language. Its revival started in 1904 and there are now a growing number of speakers, currently in the thousands, some of whom were brought up bilingually. The development of revived Prussian
Old Prussian language
Prussian is an extinct Baltic language, once spoken by the inhabitants of the original territory of Prussia in an area of what later became East Prussia and eastern parts of...
started in the second half of the 20th century by the work of Vytautas Mažiulis
Vytautas Mažiulis
Vytautas Mažiulis was a highly distinguished Lithuanian Balticist, an expert on the Old Prussian language and Indo-European languages.-Biography:...
and others.
Official attempts to revitalise languages under threat from extinction, such as the promotion of Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
in both the Republic
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
and Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
(see Gaelic revival
Gaelic Revival
The Gaelic revival was the late-nineteenth-century national revival of interest in the Irish language and Irish Gaelic culture...
), Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
in Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, Galician
Galician language
Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
in Galicia, Basque
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
in Basque Country, and Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
in Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
have met with mixed success.
In China, too, a few groups of Manchu language
Manchu language
Manchu is a Tungusic endangered language spoken in Northeast China; it used to be the language of the Manchu, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 70 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus...
enthusiasts are trying to revive the language of their ancestors using available dictionaries and textbooks, and even occasional visit to Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County
Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County
Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County in Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in northern Xinjiang is the only Xibe autonomous county of the People's Republic of China. It has an area of 4,430 square kilometers and a population 160,000...
in Xinjiang
Xinjiang
Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
, where the related Xibe language
Xibe language
The Xibe language is the most widely spoken of the Tungusic languages spoken by members of the Xibe ethnic group in Xinjiang, in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.-Phonology:...
is still spoken natively.
Some Amerindian groups have attempted to revive moribund languages.
Often the organization reviving the language chooses a particular dialect, even standardizes
Language planning
Language planning is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure, or acquisition of languages or language variety within a speech community. It is often associated with government planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organizations, such as grass-roots...
one from several variants, and adds new forms, mainly modern vocabulary, through neologisms, extensions of meaning for old words, calque
Calque
In linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation.-Calque:...
s from sibling languages (Arabic for Modern Hebrew, Welsh and Breton for Cornish), or plain borrowings from the modern international languages.
Supporters of other variants can feel that the chosen form is not "the real one", and that the original purpose of the revival has been defeated.
Europe
In Europe, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the use of both local and learned languages declined as the central governments of the different states imposed their vernacular language as the standard throughout education and official use (this was the case in FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
).
In the last few decades, local nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
and human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
movements have made a more multicultural
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
policy standard in European states; sharp condemnation of the earlier practices of suppressing regional languages was expressed in the use of such terms as "linguicide". Campaigns have raised the profiles of local languages to such an extent that in some European regions, the local languages have acquired the status of official language
Official language
An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
s, along with the national language. The Council of Europe
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe is an international organisation promoting co-operation between all countries of Europe in the areas of legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation...
's action in this area (see European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is a European treaty adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe...
) is in contrast to the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
's granting of official status to a restricted number of official languages (see Languages of the European Union
Languages of the European Union
The languages of the European Union are languages used by people within the member states of the European Union. They include the twenty-three official languages of the European Union along with a range of others...
).
On the other end of the spectrum, Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, the learned language in which higher education and academic communication were carried out in Europe for many centuries, thus providing a cultural link to the continent across all of its universities until the aforementioned period, has also been the object of a language revival movement and is precariously growing in number of speakers (cf. Living Latin), although, as a language which is native to no people, this movement has received little support from governments, national or supranational.
Worldwide
In recent times alone, more than 2000 languages have already become extinctExtinct language
An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers., or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication...
around the world. Still others have only a few known speakers; these languages are called endangered languages.
The UN estimates that more than half of the languages spoken today have fewer than 10,000 speakers and that a quarter have fewer than 1,000 speakers and that, unless there are some efforts to maintain them, over the next hundred years most of these will become extinct.
The Endangered Language Fund
Endangered Language Fund
The Endangered Language Fund is a small non-profit organization based in New Haven, Connecticut. E.L.F. supports endangered language maintenance and documentation projects that aim to preserve the world’s languages while contributing rare linguistic data to the scientific...
is a fund dedicated to the preservation and revival of endangered languages.
See also
- Foundation for Endangered LanguagesFoundation for Endangered LanguagesThe Foundation for Endangered Languages is a non-profit organization, registered as Charity 1070616 in England and Wales, founded in 1996. Its current chairman is Nicholas Ostler....
- The Language ConservancyThe Language ConservancyThe Language Conservancy is a nonprofit organization that provides language revitalization support to the world's endangered languages, restoring them to health and stability, and safeguarding them for future generations. The LC supports several ongoing language restoration efforts through its...
- Language nestLanguage nestThe Language nest is an immersion-based approach to language revitalization which was originated as a part of the Māori language revival, when was coined as Kōhanga reo....
- Language planningLanguage planningLanguage planning is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure, or acquisition of languages or language variety within a speech community. It is often associated with government planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organizations, such as grass-roots...
- Language policyLanguage policyMany countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to...
- Linguicide
- Linguistic purismLinguistic purismLinguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is the practice of defining one variety of a language as being purer than other varieties. The ideal of purity is often opposed in reference to a perceived decline from an "ideal past" or an unwanted similarity with other languages, but sometimes simply...
- List of endangered languages
- List of extinct languages
- List of language regulators
- List of revived languages
- Minority languageMinority languageA minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities.-International politics:...
- Punana leoPunana LeoPūnana Leo are private, non-profit preschools run by families, in which the Hawaiian language is the language of instruction and administration. Initially opened illegally, the first Pūnana Leo opened in 1984 in Kekaha, Kaua'i...
, Hawaiian language schools. - Regional languageRegional languageA regional language is a language spoken in an area of a nation state, whether it be a small area, a federal state or province, or some wider area....
- Rosetta ProjectRosetta ProjectThe Rosetta Project is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers working to develop a contemporary version of the historic Rosetta Stone to last from 2000 to 12,000 AD; it is run by the Long Now Foundation. Its goal is a meaningful survey and near permanent archive of 1,500...
- Sacred languageSacred languageA sacred language, "holy language" , or liturgical language, is a language that is cultivated for religious reasons by people who speak another language in their daily life.-Concept:...
- Second language acquisitionSecond language acquisitionSecond-language acquisition or second-language learning is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language acquisition is also the name of the scientific discipline devoted to studying that process...
Further reading
- Grenoble, L. A. and Whaley, L. J. (1998). Endangered Languages: Language Loss and Community Response. Cambridge University Press. (ISBN 0-521-59712-9)
- Nettle, D. and Romaine, S. (2000). Vanishing Voices. Oxford University Press. (ISBN 0-19-515246-8)
- Reyhner, J. (ed.) (1999). Revitalizing indigenous languages. Flagstaff, AZ : Northern Arizona University, Center for Excellence in Education. (ISBN 0-9670554-0-7)
External links
- Onkwehonwe.com Endangered Language ChatBots, develops and hosts endangered language bots that send translations to any communication device including computers, phones, mobile devices, talking toys, and more.
- Schola, Latin Language revival network
- Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project
- Cajun Ethnicity and the Intergenerational Transmission of Louisiana French
- Society to Advance Indigenous Vernaculars of the United States