Linguist discusses endangered languages

More than 60 faculty and students crammed into a small classroom in Ballantine Hall on Friday to hear renowned linguist Lindsay Whaley speak about endangered languages.

Whaley, a professor of linguistics and classics at Dartmouth College, presented the lecture, “What We (Still) Don’t Know About Endangered Languages.”

He spoke about studies and research that examine the shrinking number of languages used across the globe.

He then analyzed several topics he thinks linguists and anthropologists need to address to make the conversation surrounding the topic more effective and accurate.

“Right now, we sit at one of the most pronounced demographic shifts in history,” Whaley said. “We’ve really reached a place where we can bring a much greater degree of rigor to the debate.”

Whaley addressed three key issues in his lecture.

He said predictions about the number of endangered and disappearing languages need to be reevaluated and attributed to a source because numbers commonly are declared without proper attribution.

He said many academics and researchers base their work on the findings of linguist Michael Krauss in 1992, but the language demographics have changed since then.

“We need to be a little bit more careful about using these statistics if we want to make progress,” Whaley said.

“We need more taxonomy (classification) and more fine-tuned studies. Globalization, colonization and industrialization do not have the same impact everywhere.”

Krauss’s numbers reveal that 600, or 10 percent, of the world’s languages are safe, and 2,400, or 40 percent, are endangered.

But 3,000, or 50 percent, of the world’s languages are moribund, meaning they are no longer being taught to children and therefore will not survive the next generation.

Whaley also questioned what actually is lost when a language disappears. He said it isn’t just the language but also a list of cultural and historical aspects tied to the language that can only be communicated through the native tongue.

“We are trying to make the case that endangered linguistics is not just a phenomenon, but a bad phenomenon,” he said.

The last issue he addressed was whether endangered languages are like endangered species.

He said although the analogy gives the general public a way to understand the issue, it really doesn’t accurately portray the problems at hand.

The loss of one language does not put others at risk for extinction, and the survival of a language does not depend on its suitability in a particular region.

Whaley said bringing change to the field of endangered languages is hard to do from afar.

“It is hard to affect change from a distance because these are cultural, social, political and ethnic issues, not just linguistic issues,” he said.

Nate Sims, a sophomore linguistics major raised in the Sichuan Province in South China, attended the lecture.

He said while growing up, he noticed minority groups in China did not value their languages and pushed their children to learn Mandarin.

“The challenge is trying to convince native speakers that language diversity is valuable,” he said.

Kevin Rottet, associate professor in the Department of French and Italian and adjunct professor in linguistics, said the purpose of the lecture was to bring together students and scholars who share a passion for the endangered languages but haven’t heard of each other’s work.

The lecture was sponsored by West European Studies, the Department of French and Italian, Department of Second Language Studies, Department of Germanic Studies, Department of Linguistics and Department of Spanish and Portuguese.