When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics)

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When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics)
K. David Harrison | 2007-02-01 00:00:00 | Oxford University Press, USA | 304 | Foreign Languages
It is commonly agreed by linguists and anthropologists that the majority of languages spoken now around the globe will likely disappear within our lifetime. The phenomenon known as language death has started to accelerate as the world has grown smaller.

This extinction of languages, and the knowledge therein, has no parallel in human history. K. David Harrison's book is the first to focus on the essential question, 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?

Harrison spans the globe from Siberia, to North America, to the Himalayas and elsewhere, to look at the human knowledge that is slowly being lost as the languages that express it fade from sight. He uses fascinating anecdotes and portraits of some of these languages' last remaining speakers, in order to demonstrate that this knowledge about ourselves and the world is inherently precious and once gone, will be lost forever. This knowledge is not only our cultural heritage (oral histories, poetry, stories, etc.) but very useful knowledge about plants, animals, the seasons, and other aspects of the natural world--not to mention our understanding of the capacities of the human mind. Harrison's book is a testament not only to the pressing issue of language death, but to the remarkable span of human knowledge and ingenuity. It will fascinate linguists, anthropologists, and general readers.
Reviews
The author is a linguist specializing dying languages. As Harrison points out, a very large fraction of the world's extant languages are spoken by very small groups and are being displaced by absorption into more common languages. These vanishing languages are invariably from oral cultures in which language is the primary repository of considerable inherited knowledge. One language of mountain farmers in the Phillipines contains a remarkably detailed vocabulary for rice cultivation and rice strains, a language in the Solomon Islands is particularly rich in terms for fish behavior, and many of these languages encode impressive geographic knowledge of their regions. When languages are lost, inherited knowledge, along with religious and many other cultural traditions are lost with them. Harrison argues well that language loss is significantly diminishing our cultural and scientific patrimony.



In addition, Harrison argues well also that language diversity is scientifically important in understanding not only human language capacity per se but important aspects of human cognition generally. The great diversity of languages provides raw data for looking at human cognitive capacities. Harrison shows very nicely the diversity of counting systems, grammatical systems, topographic knowledge encoded by language, and other features that reveal the impressive diversity of language capacities. Without efforts to preserve or record these dying languages, potentially important data about the human mind will be irretrievably lost.



Beyond these scientific reasons to be interested in dying languages, Harrison shows very well how language death reduces cultural diversity and our general cultural patrimony. Harrison presents some powerful vignettes about what is lost with the death of language and some particularly poignant stories about the efforts of speakers of dying languages to hold onto their languages.
Reviews
David Harrison's book brings attention to the critical matter of disappearing languages and the knowledge about mankind being lost with them. Better and more tragic than a novel!
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the book came quickly and was in perfect condition - would definitely buy from again
Reviews
Every two weeks, a language dies. Over the past several years there have been several books written about this sad phenomenon, ranging from popular works such as Mark Abley's Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages to more academic coverage like Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages by Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine. K. David Harrison's When Languages Die has a universal appeal. The author, a professor of linguistics at Swathmore College, writes in an approachable style that emphasizes the human element of language death, the last speakers of languages who feel great pain at their loss, while giving a rigorous argument for language preservation.



One common point in favor of language preservation is that certain possibilities of human language are found only in small indigenous languages, and were they not attested there, we would not know the human brain could accept such features. Urarina, a language spoken in the Amazon that has OVS word order, is the standard example and is present here. Harrison, however, gives some original arguments. His fieldwork has taken him to several smaller populations of Eastern Europe, Siberia, the Philippines and Mongolia. He has visited populations who maintain a traditional way of life with complex folk techniques. Harrison's first argument for language preservation is that the switch from an indigenous language and its useful terminology for local industry to an outside language creates inefficiency. He observes that older reindeer herders among Siberian peoples speaking their own language are able to express themselves about their duties much more concisely than a younger generation speaking Russian, who must resort to circumlocution. I like this argument. It does not resort to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language determines what you can say, for the younger generation can still speak of the details of reindeer herding, but it sees value in a language that can encode such information more efficiently.



Harrison's second argument for action against language death is that traditional languages pass down useful knowledge through the generations simply by being used, and this knowledge is lost through adopting an outside language. He gives exhaustive coverage of various calendar systems throughout the world, where names for months are tied to the agriculture or hunting cycle. Simply by growing up speaking such a language, a young person is endowed with knowledge of the plant cycle or the breeding habits of local wildlife. He gives examples of Siberian populations who no longer remember details of certain natural phenonmenon because they have lost their traditional calendar and use only the Russian one. While in many cases this is applicable, this argument doesn't hold when local peoples simply cease caring about traditional views of the natural environment. The same forces which encourage language shift, industrialization and urbanization, are those which tend to replace traditional ways of life altogether. When people are living in large blocks of flats in the city, going to work in offices or factories, is the traditional calendar any more meaningful than the new one?



In fact, this ties into one major objection I have to pleas for language preservation as usually formulated. As linguists, we can agree with languages are interesting and worthy of preservation. We might agree that some of what indigenous populations do, such as their agricultural lore, should be preserved. However, I don't see how we must all believe that all indigenous ways of life are worth maintaining. This is especially true with regards to religion. Whatever your spiritual beliefs are, religion is usually an issue of what is right against what is falsehood, and it doesn't make sense to call for relativism. Have some priorities here, people. While less critical of missionary efforts than other books on this subject, even Harrison succumbs to this, writing on page 153 'We should be sensitive to the impending loss of so many more religions and worldviews as languages die.' I would like to make linguistics my life's work, but there's no way I buy that.



The book is lavishly illustrated with photos of the speakers of threatened languages and with various diagrams. The author even includes sign languages alongside spoken languages, which no other work on the subject to my knowledge has done. Of the books I've read on the general phenomenon of language death and the worthiness of language preservation, Harrison's When Languages Die is, while by no means perfect, probably the best.
Reviews
"When Languages Die" illuminates one of sad the results of centralized governments and the emergence of a world monoculture. It should be required reading for high school history students. Another fine book on the topic of the loss of language and culture to monolithic government is "The Discovery of France" by Graham Robb, which details the intertwined maze of languages and cultures in what is now known as France, that was dismantled and destroyed after the French Revolution. It gives a better perspective to viewing the plight of politically marginal cultures like the Basques and the Kurds, just to mention a couple famous groups. Did you know, for instance, that the Languedoc region of France (translate Languedoc to Langue d'Occ) was once the center of the second great language of France, Occitan, and that it is still spoken in France? You'll be led into studying the story of the destruction of the native Christian culture of the Cathars of France by the crusades and The Inquisition. Another fascinating addition to "When Languages Die" is a book and CD published by Ellipsis Arts called "Deep In the Heart Of Tuva: cowboy music from the wild east", a small book and large recording of the music and unique language of the region of Mongolia named Tuva, which was central to "When Languages Die". We can conserve lost animals in cryobanks and zoos; but you'd better take a close look at these cultures before they're gone. Oh, yes, also read about the Marsh Arabs of Southern Iraq, killed off and dispersed by Saddam; a culture of 500,000 to 1,000,000 persons dating back to the Sumerians.

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