I have previously argued the importance of human diversity, including in the context of languages. Over half of the 7,000 languages in the world today are poised to die in a few decades, an event without parallel in human history. In a recent book, When Languages Die, author K. David Harrison asks: "What is lost when a language dies? What forms of knowledge are embedded in a language's structure and vocabulary? And how harmful is it to humanity that such knowledge is lost forever?" Here is a review by David Perlman:
A tiny community of reindeer herders in Siberia holds intimate knowledge of the lives, the foraging and the rutting season of their priceless animals, and it's the kind of information that is vital to anyone concerned by the loss of human cultures -- and to biologists worried about the loss of species diversity anywhere in the world.
Of the 426 members of Siberia's isolated Chulym people, only 35 still speak Tuvan, their ancient language, fluently, and they're all older than 50. Everyone else speaks only Russian, according to K. David Harrison, an adventuresome linguist at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Harrison has lived with the Chulym and hopes to preserve their vanishing language.
The Chulym can fully describe a "2-year-old male castrated rideable reindeer" with only the single word chary, and to Harrison, that not only shows how ancient languages differ from their modern counterparts, but is symbolic of a worldwide loss in important cultural diversity.
More here.
Additional reviews here and here, an interview with the author, and Colbert's take on the topic. Also check out the ambitious Rosetta Project, "a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers building a publicly accessible online archive of ALL documented human languages."
Comments