A new report shows a direct link
between disappearing habitats and the loss of languages. One in four of the
world's 7,000 spoken tongues is now at risk of falling silent for ever as the
threat to cultural biodiversity grows
By John Vidal
 |
A Nenets reindeer herdswoman in
Widstrand/WWF (click on picture for graphic
depicting global language loss)
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Wenda has known and
forgotten other languages. Some are indigenous, spoken by his grandparents or
just a few hundred people from neighbouring valleys; others are the languages
of Indonesian colonists and global businesses. His words for "greeting"
are, variously, Kawonak, Nayak, Nareh, Koyao, Aelak, Selamt, Brata, Tabeaya and
Hello.
New Guinea has
around 1,000 languages, but as the politics change and deforestation
accelerates, the natural barriers that once allowed so many languages to
develop there in isolation are broken down.
This is part of a process that has seen
languages decline as biodiversitydecreases.
Researchers have established a correlation between changes in local
environments – including the extinction of species – and the disappearance of
languages spoken by communities who had inhabited them.
"The forests
are being cut down. Many languages are being lost. Migrants come and people leave
to find work in the lowlands and cities. The Indonesian government stops us
speaking our languages in schools," says Wenda.
According to a report
by researchers Jonathan Loh at the Zoological Society of London and David
Harmon at the George Wright Society, the steep declines in both
languages and nature mirror each other. One in four of the world's 7,000
languages are now threatened with extinction, and linguistic diversity is
declining as fast as biodiversity – about 30% since 1970, they say.
While around 21% of
all mammals, 13% of birds, 15% of reptiles and 30% of amphibians are
threatened, around 400 languages are thought to have become extinct in the same
time.
New Guinea, the
second-largest island in the world, is not just the world's most linguistically
diverse place, it is also one of the most biologically abundant, with
tree-climbing kangaroos, birds of paradise, carnivorous mice, giant pigeons,
rats bigger than domestic cats and more orchid species than any other place on
the planet.
Today, both its wildlife and
its languages are endangered. According to linguist and author Asya
Pereltsvaig, the language of Bo is spoken by 85 people, Ak by 75 and
Karawa by only 63. Likum and Hoia Hoia have around 80 speakers, and Abom just
15. Guramalum in New Ireland Province had at the last count only three speakers
and Lua is almost certainly extinct, with a single speaker recorded in 2000.
Ironically, Lua is
now the name of a successful computer programming language.
More than half of
New Guinea's and one in four of the world's remaining languages are threatened,
says Jonathan Loh. This compares with estimates that suggest a quarter of all
mammals, a third of all sharks and rays and one in seven bird species are endangered.
"There are
extraordinary parallels between linguistic diversity and biodiversity,"
says Loh. "Both are products of evolution and have evolved in remarkably
similar ways, and both are facing an extinction crisis."
But exactly why
there should be such a close link between languages and biological diversity is
unclear, even though it was noticed by Darwin. "Places of high diversity,
especially tropical forests, have always been known to have high linguistic
diversity, whereas tundra and deserts have low diversity," says Loh.
"It is possible in some way that higher biodiversity is capable of
supporting greater cultural diversity. The explanation seems to be that both
biological and cultural diversity depend on the same environmental factors such
as temperature and rainfall."
Conservationists
fear that the loss of species due to man's activities is accelerating. And
linguists say that the wealth of the world's human languages is now safeguarded
by very few indigenous peoples, most of whom live precarious lives in
developing countries.
Of the 7,000
languages spoken worldwide, half now have fewer than 10,000 speakers, and these
3,500 languages are spoken by only 0.1% of the world's population – equivalent
to a city about the size of London. These eight million people are now
responsible for keeping the wealth of human cultural history alive, says the
report.
At the other end of
the spectrum, because of colonisation, globalisation and the worldwide move to
cities in the last 30 years, a handful of global languages increasingly
dominates: 95% of the world's population speaks one of just 400 languages, each
spoken by millions of people, and 40% of us speak one of just eight languages:
Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian and Japanese.
"We are losing
the richness of human diversity, becoming more and more similar. The languages
we speak define how we think and understand the world," says Mandana
Seyfeddinipur, director of the endangered languages archive at the School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
"The loss of
human culture is frightening," says Loh. "Nearly all the threatened
languages are spoken by indigenous peoples and, along with the languages, the
traditional knowledge of these cultures is being forgotten. The names, uses,
and preparation of medicines, the methods of farming, fishing and hunting are
disappearing, not to mention the vast array of spiritual and religious beliefs
and practices which are as diverse and numerous as the languages
themselves."
Loh and Harman argue that if you want to save
nature it may be vital to conserve cultures too. "The vast store of
knowledge that has evolved and accumulated over tens of thousands of years
could be lost in the next 100 years," says Harman. "While linguists
have made efforts to archive as many of the endangered languages as possible,
and ethnobiologists have attempted to record the traditional use of plants, the
most important conservation takes
place on the ground as part of a living culture."
"As we lose
rare indigenous languages we lose the cultures and all the knowledge that they
contain. The knowledge of indigenous people is phenomenal. Conservationists
should make use of it," says Loh.
The authors have developed an "index of
linguistic diversity" which shows that the fastest declines have taken place in the Americas and
Australia. Languages spoken in Africa, Asia and Europe are faring
better. For biodiversity, the fastest rates of decline have occurred in the
Indo-Pacific region, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.
"Species populations
in North America, Europe and northern Asia have been more stable. Biodiversity
has declined most rapidly in the tropics, but remained steady in temperate
regions.
"However,
linguistic diversity has declined rapidly in the new world [Americas] but more
slowly in the old world," says Harman.
The explanation for
the different speeds of decline, they say, lies with the threats that both
languages and species face. "Habitat loss and degradation is the greatest
threat for species, and since 1970 most has taken place in the tropics. In the
developed world most habitat destruction took place before 1970, so
biodiversity loss has flattened out.
"Languages do
not usually go extinct because an entire population of speakers dies out, but
because the speakers of a minority, usually indigenous, language shift to a
more dominant language and, typically within a few generations, lose their
mother tongue.
"Migration,
urbanisation and national unification policies have been the primary drivers of
language shift in Africa, Asia and Europe. In the Americas and Australia, the
primary driver has also been migration, but where the migrants, mainly
European, greatly outnumbered the indigenous populations.
"Ultimately
both biodiversity and linguistic diversity are diminishing as a result of human
population growth, increasing consumption and economic globalisation which are
eroding the differences between one part of the world and another," says
the report.
Benny Wenda says
the link between human culture and biodiversity is clear because it is the
indigenous peoples of the world who have mostly conserved nature.
"If you fell
the trees then you destroy human culture as well as the birds of paradise.
People depend on the forest and the forest has always depended on us. We are as
one."
IT'S ALL TALK …
Around 7,000
languages are spoken in the world, 90% of which are used by fewer than 100,000
people.
Languages are
grouped into families that share a common ancestry. English is related to
German and Dutch, and they are all part of the Indo-European family of
languages. Romance languages, which include French, Spanish and Italian, come
from Latin.
2,200 of the
world's languages can be found in Asia, while Europe has 260.
The world's most
widely spoken languages by number of native speakers and as a second language
are: Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian,
Portuguese, Japanese, German and French.
Some of the oldest
languages known include Sanskrit, Sumerian, Hebrew and Basque.
Around 2,500
languages are at risk of extinction. One-quarter of the world's languages are
spoken by fewer than 1,000 people.
The United Nations
uses six official languages to conduct business: English, French, Spanish,
Chinese, Russian and Arabic.
Communities
isolated from each other because of mountainous geography sometimes develop
multiple languages. Papua New Guinea has 832 different languages. In Mexico,
there are 68 different indigenous languages, further subdivided into 364
variations.
At least half of
the world's population are bilingual or plurilingual. While there are
"perfect bilinguals", who speak two languages equally well, most
bilinguals do not.
South Africa has 11
official languages – the most for a single country.
The pope tweets in
nine languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish, Arabic,
Portuguese and Latin.
