"Advice"
or "advise"? "Farther" or "further"?
"Principal" or "principle"? It's easy to confuse words that
are similar in sound, spelling, or meaning. But with a bit of review it's also
easy to clear up such confusions.
A linguistic term for
the end or extinction of a language.
Distinctions are commonly drawn between an endangered language (one
with few or no children learning the language) and an extinct language
(one in which the last native speaker has
died).
Examples and Observations:
"Every
14 days a language dies. By 2100, more than half of the more than 7,000
languages spoken on Earth--many of them not yet recorded--may disappear,
taking with them a wealth of knowledge about history, culture, the natural
environment, and the human brain." (National Geographic
Society, Enduring Voices Project)
"I
am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the
pedigree of nations." (Samuel Johnson, quoted by
James Boswell in The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 1785)
"Language
death occurs in unstable bilingual or multilingual speech communities
as a result of language shift from a regressive minority language to a
dominant majority language." (Wolfgang Dressler,
"Language Death." 1988)
"Aboriginal
Australia holds some of the world's most endangered languages including
Amurdag, which was believed to be extinct until a few years ago when
linguists came across speaker Charlie Mangulda living in the Northern
Territory." (Holly Bentley, "Mind
Your Language." The Guardian, Aug. 13, 2010)
The Effects
of a Dominant Language "A language is said to be dead
when no one speaks it any more. It may continue to have existence in
recorded form, of course--traditionally in writing, more
recently as part of a sound or video archive (and it does in a sense 'live
on' in this way)--but unless it has fluent speakers one would not talk of
it as a 'living language.' . . .
"The effects of a dominant language vary markedly in different parts
of the world, as do attitudes towards it. In Australia, the presence of English has,
directly or indirectly, caused great linguistic devastation, with 90% of
languages moribund. But English is not the language which is dominant
throughout Latin America: if languages are dying there, it is not through
any 'fault' of English. Moreover, the presence of a dominant language does
not automatically result in a 90% extinction rate. Russian has long been
dominant in the countries of the former USSR, but there the total destruction
of local languages has been estimated to be only (sic) 50%." (David Crystal, Language
Death. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002)
Aesthetic
Loss "The main loss when a language
dies is not cultural but aesthetic. The click sounds in certain African
languages are magnificent to hear. In many Amazonian languages, when you
say something you have to specify, with a suffix, where you got the information.
The Ket language of Siberia is so awesomely irregular as to seem a work of
art.
"But let’s remember that this aesthetic delight is mainly savored by
the outside observer, often a professional savorer like myself.
Professional linguists or
anthropologists are part of a distinct human minority. . . .
"At the end of the day, language death is, ironically, a
symptom of people coming together. Globalization means hitherto isolated
peoples migrating and sharing space. For them to do so and still maintain
distinct languages across generations happens only amidst unusually
tenacious self-isolation--such as that of the Amish--or brutal
segregation. (Jews did not speak Yiddish in order to revel in their
diversity but because they lived in an apartheid society.)" (John McWhorter, "The
Cosmopolitan Tongue: The Universality of English." World Affairs
Journal, Fall 2009)
Steps to Preserve Languages [T]he best non-linguists can do, in North-America, towards
preserving languages, dialects, vocabularies
and the like is, among other possible actions,
Participating
in associations which, in the US and Canada, work to obtain from local
and national governments a recognition of the importance of Indian
languages (prosecuted and led to quasi-extinction during the XIXth century)
and cultures, such as those of the Algonquian, Athabaskan, Haida,
Na-Dene, Nootkan, Penutian, Salishan, Tlingit communities, to name just a
few;
Participating
in funding the creation of schools and the appointment and payment of
competent teachers;
Participating
in the training of linguists and ethnologists belonging to Indian tribes,
in order to foster the publication of grammars and dictionaries, which
should also be financially helped;
Acting
in order to introduce the knowledge of Indian cultures as one of the
important topics in American and Canadian TV and radio programs.
(French
linguist Claude Hagège, author of On the Death and Life of Languages, in
"Q and A: The Death of Languages." The New York Times, Dec.
16, 2009)
An
Endangered Language in Tabasco "The language of Ayapaneco has
been spoken in the land now known as Mexico for centuries. It has survived
the Spanish conquest, seen off wars, revolutions, famines and floods. But
now, like so many other indigenous languages, it's at risk of extinction.
"There are just two people left who can speak it fluently--but they
refuse to talk to each other. Manuel Segovia, 75, and Isidro Velazquez,
69, live 500 metres apart in the village of Ayapa in the tropical lowlands
of the southern state of Tabasco. It is not clear whether there is a
long-buried argument behind their mutual avoidance, but people who know
them say they have never really enjoyed each other's company.
"'They
don't have a lot in common,' says Daniel Suslak, a linguistic
anthropologist from Indiana University, who is involved with a project to
produce a dictionary of Ayapaneco. Segovia, he says, can be 'a little
prickly' and Velazquez, who is 'more stoic,' rarely likes to leave his
home.
"The dictionary is part of a race against time to revitalise the
language before it is definitively too late. 'When I was a boy everybody
spoke it,' Segovia told the Guardian by phone. 'It's disappeared
little by little, and now I suppose it might die with me.'" (Jo Tuckman, "Language
at Risk of Dying Out--Last Two Speakers Aren't Talking." The
Guardian, April 13, 2011)
"Those
linguists racing to save dying languages--urging villagers to raise their
children in the small and threatened language rather than the bigger
national language--face criticism that they are unintentionally helping
keep people impoverished by encouraging them to stay in a small-language
ghetto." (Robert Lane Greene, You
Are What You Speak. Delacorte, 2011)
The phenomenon by which
permanent alterations are made in the features and the use of a language over time. All natural languages change, and language change affects all
areas of language use. Types of language change include
The branch of linguistics that is expressly concerned with changes
in a language (or in languages) over time is historical
linguistics (also
known as diachronic linguistics).
Examples and Observations:
"For
centuries people have speculated about the causes of language change.
The problem is not one of thinking up possible causes, but of deciding
which to take seriously. . . .
"Even when we have eliminated the 'lunatic fringe' theories, we are
left with an enormous number of possible causes to take into
consideration. Part of the problem is that there are several different
causative factors at work, not only in language as a whole, but also in
any one change. . . .
"We can begin by dividing proposed causes of change into two broad
categories. On the one hand, there are external sociolinguistic
factors--that is, social factors outside the language system. On the other
hand, there are internal psycholinguistic
ones--that is, linguistic and psychological factors which reside in the
structure of the language and the minds of the speakers."
Words on
the Way Out
"Amidst and amongst are all rather formal, almost
affected, now, and are more usually encountered in high-brow writing, less
usually in speech. This suggests that these forms are on the way out. They
will probably bite the dust, just as betwixt and erst have
done . . .."
Anthropological
Perspective on Language Change
"There are many factors influencing the rate at which language
changes, including the attitudes of the speakers toward borrowing and change.
When most members of a speech community value novelty, for example, their
language will change more quickly.
When most members of a speech community value
stability, then their language will change more slowly.
When a particular pronunciation or word or grammatical form or turn
of phrase is regarded as more desirable, or marks its users as more important
or powerful, then it will be adopted and imitated more rapidly than otherwise.
. . .
"The important thing to remember about change is that, as long as people
are using a language, that language will undergo some change."
Prescriptivist
Perspective on Language Change
"I see no absolute Necessity why any Language would be perpetually
changing."
Sporadic
and Systematic Changes in Language
"Changes in language may be systematic or sporadic. The addition of a
vocabulary item to name a new product, for
example, is a sporadic change that has little impact on the rest of the lexicon.
Even some phonological changes are sporadic. For instance, many
speakers of English pronounce the word catch to rhyme with wretch
rather than hatch. . . .
"Systematic changes, as the term suggests, affect an entire system or
subsystem of the language. . . . A conditioned systematic change is brought
about by context or environment, whether linguistic or extralinguistic.
For many speakers of English, the short e
vowel (as in bet) has, in some words, been replaced by a short i
vowel (as in bit), For these speakers, pin and pen, him
and hem are homophones (words
pronounced the same). This change is conditioned because it occurs only in the
context of a following m or n; pig and peg, hill
and hell, middle and meddle are not pronounced alike for
these speakers."
The Wave
Model of Language Change
"[T]he distribution of regional language features may be viewed as
the result of language change through geographical space over time.
A
change is initiated at one locale at a given point in time and spreads outward
from that point in progressive stages so that earlier changes reach the
outlying areas later. This model of language change is referred to as the wave
model . . .."
Geoffrey
Chaucer on Changes in the "Forme of Speeche"
"Ye knowe ek that in forme of speeche is chaunge
Withinne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
That hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem, and yet thei spake hem so,
And spedde as wel in love as men now do;
Ek for to wynnen love in sondry ages,
In sondry londes, sondry ben usages."
["You know also that in (the) form of speech (there) is change
Within a thousand years, and words then
That had value, now wonderfully curious and strange
(To) us they seem, and yet they spoke them so,
And succeeded as well in love as men now do;
Also to win love in sundry ages,
In sundry lands, (there) are many usages."]
(Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, late 14th century.
Translation by Roger Lass in "Phonology and Morphology." A
History of the English Language, edited by Richard M. Hogg and David
Denison. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008)
