2/13: Linguistic Diversity and Language Loss

If you've followed previous articles or have attempted it yourself, you know that defining in exact terms what a language is turns out to be much trickier than it seems. So what is a language? "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy" is a quip generally attributed to linguist Max Weinreich, who heard it from an audience member at one of his lectures. While the sentiment in the adage—that political and military power allows languages to flourish—still rings true today, we might also modify the statement slightly: "A language is a dialect with an army, a navy, a television broadcast, and a currency." 

In our globalized world, speakers of languages without those resources more often than not find themselves forced to learn a second language—usually the language of a hegemonic or nearby power—in order to engage with their surrounding world. National Geographic interviewed speakers of Tuvan, a language spoken in the Russian state of Tuva in Southern Siberia. But in order to engage with people beyond their state, and to consume media from around the world, Tuvans must also learn Russian, Chinese, English, or all three. Tuvan, though, which has about 235,000 native speakers, is lucky compared to neighboring languages, some of which have dwindled to a couple hundred or a dozen speakers. 

A language becomes likely to go extinct if existing speakers no longer teach the next generation of children the language. Researching and examining those languages which may likely disappear in the next few generations, a language learner runs into a dilemma. How can we save these languages? Many students choose to study languages so they can engage with more people in the world, whether as part of their future career, to reconnect with their family's heritage, or simply to be able to speak with local people while traveling. If students are choosing languages in order to communicate and connect with other people, it becomes difficult to find students willing to learn a language with only a few speakers, especially if they are unlikely to encounter those speakers except in a very specific geographic area. 

Yet, preserving these languages also has inherent value for humanity. National Geographic writes that the "ongoing collapse of the world's biodiversity" is a good metaphor for the crisis of language loss. Every lost language "deprives us of knowledge," including regional-specific knowledge about ecosystems and nature, but also broader knowledge about the human experience. Of course, languages are more than data points for historical linguists; to their speakers, they are their means of seeing and communicating with the world. Language loss only furthers regional or global cultural hegemony and homogeneity. 

And if we trace this path, starting with language loss, to its furthest conclusions, the results become even more dramatic. The homogenizing of the world's languages—alongside economic pressures—encourages, or sometimes forces, speakers to move close together into larger and larger urban centers. It also encourages assimilation from language-specific traditions into the dominant cultural traditions. This monoculture, a term that already has negative connotations, becomes ripe for both human and non-human threats, including viral diseases. The waning of linguistic and cultural diversity can be seen as an existential threat, not only to speakers of those languages, but to all humans on Earth. 

Today, 61% of the languages that were spoken as a first language in 1795 are either extinct or likely to be so in a few decades. In all likelihood, this pattern will continue. And while efforts to preserve languages are crucial, when led by outsiders they can often lead to further crises. Members of the Lakota nation have accused the founder of the Language Conversancy, an organization that claims to protect and save dying languages, as learning the Lakota language from them and then attempting to copyright and profit from Lakota language materials. At the same time, other members argue that TLC has helped preserve their language for the future, despite questionable methods which raise a whole other set of questions about the legal status of languages. 

Preserving language diversity is extremely valuable, and as language learners ourselves we can always keep in mind the possibility to contribute to language preservation. At the same time, learning any new language, even if it has hegemonic power elsewhere, can help us preserve a more linguistically diverse world.