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Nearly half of the world’s 6000 languages face extinction within the next century. When languages die they take entire methods of communication and stores of knowledge with them. Linguist Greg Anderson of The Living Tongues Institute explains what we lose when a language disappears.
On the program I heard on December 2, host Bob Garfield got a chuckle about a woman in Siberia suffering from senility. If he considers dementia amusing, maybe he will find cancer hilarious.
This falls short, far short, of the standard I expect of a broadcast on NPR.
With One Laptop Per Child XO laptop, which has a built-in video camera and microphone, we have a global opportunity for language communities to record themselves. To make this happen, we need training materials for the schoolchildren getting the laptops, including materials that they can translate to local languages and give to the elderly speakers of the most endangered languages.
I have started a Wiki page on this topic at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Saving Languages
Anyone who has an interest or would like to take part is welcome to add projects to that page or questions and answers to its discussion page.
Matthew has an excellent point, it certainly was the low point of the show, but Edward’s suggestion, which came out of left field for this story, strikes me as a brilliant application of the tool, which I adore from afar.
My comment is, of course more self-referential.
Mentioning Fahrenheit 451, again, as I did gives me the excuse to note that our city’s Festival of Arts & Ideas chose the book for our Big Read this year, an announcement already published but unread by me before my post last week.
The director of the Festival mentioned, as her example of one of the “Book People”, a character who had memorized the Bible; a book, like the Q’uran, which many, many have memorized. I myself might choose Kahil Gibran’s “The Prophet”, though with no disrespect to the Prophet Mohammad intended. Asimov’s entire future history series might be a bit daunting.
As for losing languages, cultures and entire ways of thinking, I have only to think of how 4 years of Spanish and 3 years of German, all in high school, and my independent study of Norse mythology in junior high school has enriched my life to find it in my heart to mourn the losses Greg Anderson is documenting.
Perhaps that is the root of his gallows humor; he mourns the languages more than sanity.
What I got a chuckle about is someone going halfway around the world to find the last living speakers of a language and running into a woman babbling nonsense.
Because, in a heartbreaking sort of way, it's hilarious.
I also laughed last week when I read about people crushed in their car when a cow fell from a cliff on top of them.
I have another point to make, but since I rarely agree with Bob, I will digress for a minute. As a society we have gotten far too sensitive about what, in essence, are inevitabilities and/or unavoidabilities (yes, I made that last word up). The situation was what it was and while I did not find it hilarious, it had a certain wry humor quality about it. Since my main point rtuns a bit long, I will post a second comment.
Clarifying pre-statement: I totally support Greg Anderson's project; I think capturing these languages before they die out is interesting and, if properly broken down and categorized for unique and/or interesting features, potentially useful. My main bone to pick is with Greg's contention that by losing these languages we will lose the vast majority (!!) of knowledge ever known. I am paraphrasing of course, but that was the essence of his comment. This is nonsense. First, there are more people alive today than have died in the history of the planet, or something like that. Add to that the fact that the amount of knowledge and discovery has been exponentially greater in the last 200 years than the entire history of humanity before. I do not mean just scientific here but art, literature, etc. And most of this has been captured in the main languages. Finally, his thesis is flawed further because even if one does capture a language from the 5 (or 500 or 5000) remaining speakers, the sum of all of that culture's knowledge throughout history will certainly not even come close to being known. Please keep up the good work, but let's not exaggerate the benefits or reasons for the project.
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