A bit like animal and plant species, UNESCO has been designing its own methodology for years to evaluate the endangered languages. There can be six levels of well-being, so to speak, or discomfort of a language: if it falls into the first two, it is doing quite well, although with some criticisms. They range from the first level, in which safe languages fall, to the second, in which they are considered vulnerable. The problems begin on the third step, that of the languages definitely in danger, to see how the situation worsens on the fourth and fifth: in serious danger and in critical danger, where only a few older people in the community speak it, and also infrequently. The last step is, of course, that of extinction.
Every year, the world loses some of its 7,000 languages. On the other hand, only thirty are used by the vast majority of the world’s population. It is no coincidence that the UN and its cultural agency, UNESCO, have declared 2022-2032 the “International Decade of Indigenous Languages”, precisely to highlight this cultural hemorrhage, in the loss of languages or dialects so deeply rooted that they constitute idioms that are somewhat autonomous. And yet very fragile. This aspect also has its weight in terms of sustainable development objectives: if parents stop speaking languages and dialects to their children, communities lose words and memories, and are no longer even able to decipher their own documents, the writings of the past. . They are also unable to protect their territory and their future.
The acceleration of the last five years
Until ten years ago, a language became extinct every three months, which was still an important rate. Since 2019, the pace has increased dramatically: every 40 days a language disappears from planet Earth. That is, a total of nine languages per year. Here, of course, we use the terms “language”, “idiom” and “dialect” as synonyms when of course they are not, simply to illustrate the general phenomenon without scientific socio-linguistic ambitions. Returning to Unesco’s predictions, It seems that half of the world’s languages will disappear by the end of the century. And according to experts in the field, these are optimistic forecasts.
The dynamics of extinction also differ greatly. If some languages, such as Guardian In a nice in-depth analysis of some of the digital tools used to try to save some of them, they disappear with the death of their last speakers, thousands more are in danger because they need a broader reference community. And often, precisely for this reason and in a vicious and pernicious circle, even in countries where the official language continues to be that of the former colonizing countries, they are excluded from institutional use: they are not taught in schools, they are not used formally in the work centers, are not used in urban planning.
World protection cases
One of the examples is that of Tochi Precious, a Nigerian activist from Abuja who belongs to the Wikitongues organization and who has taken a special interest in the fate of the igboa West African language in danger of extinction this year. Another case reported by the British newspaper is that of Amrit Sufi, a woman who speaks angikaa language from the eastern state of Bihar used by 7 million people but excluded from schools and rarely used for written documents, which records videos in an attempt to give a future to the oral heritage of a language considered by many to be inferior to Hindi dominant, and therefore rarely used to avoid prejudice. “Documenting popular songs has been my way of learning about my culture and making a contribution,” he explains. “There is an urgent need to document it and make it accessible so that other people can see it, not just archive it somewhere in a library. Oral culture is disappearing because new generations are more inclined to consume music produced by the industry than to sit in group and sing.”
How Wikitongues works
Wikitongues supports activists in this complicated field work, halfway between that of anthropologists and that of linguists with digital tools. Founded in 2014 in New York by Frederico Andrade, Daniel Bogre Udell and Lindie Botes, this non-profit organization has set itself the not easy goal of documenting all the world’s languages before they become extinct. It does this basically by recording videos, but also promoting the education of the most threatened, specifically through a platform called Poly (although it is not clear what became of it after its first years of use, around 2017 and 2018).
Not only that: to prevent their disappearance, it offers scholarships, training and resources to activists fighting to save them. In addition, it has made itself a linguistic “bank” with videos, as mentioned, but also dictionaries and other linguistic files in more than 700 languages. In essence, he has already studied about 10% of the idioms spoken in the world. The official website can be the starting point for a truly exciting exploration of the world, and collects many stories such as those of Precious or Sufi mentioned above. You don’t have to go far to find an endangered language: Jonathan Mayers, for example, looks after the kuri-vinialso known as Louisiana Creolea native language spoken primarily in the state, but also along the Gulf Coast between Texas and Mississippi. It is a critically endangered creole language, currently spoken by fewer than 10,000 people.
The future of languages in the hands of AI?
And yes, of course, many activists have written books about their own languages (such is the case of attempts to protect the Rohingya language, a dialect of Chittagong Bengali spoken by the minority of refugees from Myanmar in Bangladesh after decades of persecution, distributing volumes in 500 schools in refugee camps), have created local, if not hyperlocal, radio stations on a larger scale and efficiency; Artificial intelligence could also lend a hand in this regard. As? For example, by processing existing texts in certain languages and perhaps developing chatbots specific ones through which the new generations could keep in practice and learn the languages of their grandparents. Although, as some experts point out, many activists have doubts about this, that is, about the authorization of this type of materials for this type of tools. On the other hand, the choice seems in many cases between disappearance and technological commitment.
UNESCO has also been publishing for several years its Atlas of Endangered Languagesand it does it online. The starting point is the one mentioned at the beginning: the world’s linguistic diversity is seriously threatened and around 40% of populations do not have access to education in the language they speak. The latest edition dates from 2010-2011 and collects data and information on the degree of risk of extinction of some 2,500 languages in the world and the countries in which they are spoken. There is no lack of geographical coordinates with respect to the areas of adoption of each of the languages.
Article originally published in WIRED Italy. Adapted by Mauricio Serfatty Godoy.
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