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本帖最后由 忘了密码的E 于 2009-6-30 19:08 编辑
Issue 13 语言消亡 我的资料汇总
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew
Alternatively, a language is said to be extinct if, although it is known to have been spoken by people in the past, modern scholarship cannot reconstruct it to the point that it is possible to write in it or translate into it with confidence (say, a simple dialogue or a short tale written in a modern language); whereas a language is referred to as dead, but not extinct, if it is sufficiently known at present to permit such routine use, even though it has no modern speakers.
The Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, published by Unesco, the cultural section of the United Nations, features about 2,500 dialects.
The semantic content of language is always related to the entities, events, states, processes, characteristics and relations within culture, and culture depends in large measure on language in order to function and to perpetuate itself.
In all these cases, the language falls into increasing disuse, not because the peoples themselves, with their cultural traditions, have dwindled away, but because the language has been overwhelmed by a dominant one.
For healthy survival, a language needs a nation (in the broad sense of a people conscious of a group identity) that sees it as `its own'.
The languages that find themselves in the strongest position have all the resources of a national state behind them (that facetious remark "A language is a dialect with an army and navy" comes uncomfortably close to being true).
The authority of a state can assure that a language is the vehicle of education, the legal system and the mass media, and as a consequence the prestigious one of literature, poetry and song.
Its speakers more and more turn away from using a language that is perceived as conferring no real benefits in everyday life.
When only old timers even know the language, its death warrant has in effect been signed.
A language is not an organism but a set of patterns in speakers' minds and behavior. So strictly speaking, when a language goes `extinct', it is not as if something were `dying' as a living species can, but more like a cultural custom passing out of use. But a language is far more fundamental to our whole thought than, say, a regional style of dressing. When a language goes out of use, something central in human thought has vanished.
When nobody understands
THINK of the solitude felt by Marie Smith before she died earlier this year in her native Alaska, at 89 . She was the last person who knew the language of the Eyak people as a mother-tongue. Or imagine Ned Mandrell, who died in 1974—he was the last native speaker of Manx, similar to Irish and Scots Gaelic. Both these people had the comfort of being surrounded, some of the time, by enthusiasts who knew something precious was vanishing and tried to record and learn whatever they could of a vanishing tongue. In remote parts of the world, dozens more people are on the point of taking to their graves a system of communication that will never be recorded or reconstructed.
Does it matter? Plenty of languages—among them Akkadian, Etruscan, Tangut and Chibcha—have gone the way of the dodo, without causing much trouble to posterity. Should anyone lose sleep over the fact that many tongues—from Manchu (spoken in China) to Hua (Botswana) and Gwich’in (Alaska)—are in danger of suffering a similar fate?
Compared with groups who lobby to save animals or trees, campaigners who lobby to preserve languages are themselves a rare breed. But they are trying both to mitigate and publicise an alarming acceleration in the rate at which languages are vanishing. Of some 6,900 tongues spoken in the world today, some 50% to 90% could be gone by the end of the century. In Africa, at least 300 languages are in near-term danger, and 200 more have died recently or are on the verge of death. Some 145 languages are threatened in East and South-East Asia.
Some languages, even robust ones, face an obvious threat in the shape of a political power bent on imposing a majority tongue. A youngster in any part of the Soviet Union soon realised that whatever you spoke at home, mastering Russian was the key to success; citizens of China, including Tibetan ones, face similar pressure to focus on Mandarin, the main Chinese dialect.
Nor did English reach its present global status without ruthless tactics. In years past, Americans, Canadians and Australians took native children away from their families to be raised at boarding schools where English rules. In all the Celtic fringes of the British Isles there are bitter memories of children being punished for speaking the wrong language.
But in an age of mass communications, the threats to linguistic diversity are less draconian and more spontaneous. Parents stop using traditional tongues, thinking it will be better for their children to grow up using a dominant language (such as Swahili in East Africa) or a global one (such as English, Mandarin or Spanish). And even if parents try to keep the old speech alive, their efforts can be doomed by films and computer games.
The result is a growing list of tongues spoken only by white-haired elders. A book* edited by Peter Austin, an Australian linguist, gives some examples: Njerep, one of 31 endangered languages counted in Cameroon, reportedly has only four speakers left, all over 60. The valleys of the Caucasus used to be a paradise for linguists in search of unusual syntax, but Ubykh, one of the region’s baffling tongues, officially expired in 1992.
The effort to keep languages alive can lead to hard arguments, especially where limited funds are available to spend on education and official communications. In both America and Britain, some feel that, whatever people speak at home, priority should go to making sure that children know English well.
But supporters of linguistic diversity make strong arguments too. Nicholas Ostler, a scholar who heads the Foundation for Endangered Languages, a non-profit group based in Britain, says multilingual children do better academically than monolingual ones. He rejects the notion that a common tongue helps to avoid war: think of Rwanda, Bosnia and Vietnam.
Mark Abler, a Canadian writer, says the protection of endangered species is closely linked to the preservation of tongues. On a recent expedition in Australia, a rare turtle was found to have two varieties; a dying but rich native language, Gagudju, had different words for each kind.
Thanks to electronics, saviours of languages have better tools than ever before; words and sounds can easily be posted on the internet. Educational techniques are improving, too. In New Zealand Maori-speakers have formed “language nests”, in which grandparents coach toddlers in the old tongue. Australia’s dying Kamilaroi language was boosted by pop songs teenagers liked. But whatever tricks or technology are used, the only test of a language’s viability is everyday life. “The way to save languages is to speak them,” says Mr Austin. “People have to talk to people.”
The Dodo's Fate
How languages become extinct
http://mypage.iu.edu/~shetter/miniatures/extinct.htm
It's hardly possible for us to conceive of a situation where our English language is spoken by nobody any more, in other words has 'died out'. And yet this is exactly the fate of many languages.
Many used in the past are no longer spoken by anyone today. Analogous to the pictures and stuffed skins of the extinct dodo, we know about their previous existence only because of some written records, a few inscriptions, and often nothing but a reference to them somewhere. Many more must have disappeared quietly without even evidence like the biologist's fossil. In fact it has been estimated that in the last 500 years, half the world's languages have died out. The most common reason why a language 'dies' (the biological analogy shouldn't be pushed too far) is that its speakers have gradually switched to a more dominant language. Let's look at examples where this dominant language is our own English.
As we learned in school, before the British Isles were settled from the continent by the Angles and Saxons, they were inhabited by Celtic peoples. These were the ancestors of the present Welsh, Scots, Irish, Cornish and others. Over the centuries, the people who spoke the ancestor of English came to dominate the islands, pushing the Celts toward the north and west. Owing partly to a certain geographical isolation and a strong group identity, over many centuries of close contact with English the Welsh have managed to maintain their language. At present its ultimate fate is uncertain, as the number of fluent speakers gradually declines.
But the variants of Gaelic spoken by the Scots and the Irish are truly 'endangered'. Scots Gaelic is spoken today only in the northwest of Scotland, mostly the islands, and even there, more and more of daily life is carried on in English. In the Republic of Ireland, Gaelic has become a symbol of national identity, and is strongly promoted by the government as the country's second language. Instruction in it is required in all schools. But it is spoken fluently only by dwindling numbers of people in the west, where it brings no practical advantages: everyday life is in English. Cornish and Manx are Celtic languages that have become essentially extinct. Today the population of Cornwall is monolingual in English. On the Isle of Man, some speakers have some fluency in Manx along with English. Over in Normandy in France, the Celtic Breton language is enjoying a certain revival, but it too remains 'endangered'.
And it isn't only the English spoken over on those islands that has muscled away other languages. In our own country, Native American languages like Mohawk, Seminole and Choctaw (as well as many others) are all hanging on by the slenderest of threads - or have already passed into history.
In all these cases, the language falls into increasing disuse, not because the peoples themselves, with their cultural traditions, have dwindled away, but because the language has been overwhelmed by a dominant one. For healthy survival, a language needs a nation (in the broad sense of a people conscious of a group identity) that sees it as `its own'. For a variety of reasons, the Welsh have been more successful in maintaining this `nationhood' than the Scots and Irish have.
The languages that find themselves in the strongest position have all the resources of a national state behind them (that facetious remark "A language is a dialect with an army and navy" comes uncomfortably close to being true). The authority of a state can assure that a language is the vehicle of education, the legal system and the mass media, and as a consequence the prestigious one of literature, poetry and song.
What is happening in those languages which no longer carry the weight of the daily life of a society? The really crucial thing to watch for is a language's social status. Its speakers more and more turn away from using a language that is perceived as conferring no real benefits in everyday life. It may even amount to a handicap when others one needs to communicate with do not understand it. Typically speakers - in shrinking numbers - find themselves conversing about a steadily more limited range of things, and at the same time their command of the full resources of the language to express thoughts crumbles. They find it harder and harder to think of "how to say it" in the minority language. As an inevitable consequence of this, children perceive a quaintness and uselessness, and no longer learn the language fluently or at all. When only old timers even know the language, its death warrant has in effect been signed.
Most of the languages in the world today find themselves under extreme pressure from politically dominant 'prestige' languages such as English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic. This isn't always a result of intolerance and repression (though these are common enough) but of speakers' judgments about practical usefulness. An analysis of the 'Global Language System' is presented in Miniature No. 96.
A language is not an organism but a set of patterns in speakers' minds and behavior. So strictly speaking, when a language goes `extinct', it is not as if something were `dying' as a living species can, but more like a cultural custom passing out of use. But a language is far more fundamental to our whole thought than, say, a regional style of dressing. When a language goes out of use, something central in human thought has vanished. |
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