There are approximately 478 airports in France, including landing fields. Following the renaissance and the end of the Middle Ages,…

By process of elimination, if too many languages die, there will be no choice.

There are a number of reasons why this happened. First, a standard pronunciation, supported by a standard grammar and system of spelling, made the English language more communicable as a tool of administration overseas (Shakespeare writing in 16th century English famously signed his name at least six different ways and not once did Miss keep him behind for detention). Second, the onset of universal primary education made instruction through a standard English more administratively convenient. Third, and perhaps most subtely, the south-eastern dialect that became RP helped to cement the centralized state in the UK and marginalize different forms of expression of what it meant to be British. Which is why a lot of people still make fun of scousers or Indians with butt-butt accents.

So language homogenization such as the one described above is one means of asserting centralizing power. Up until the 19th century, language homogenization in Europe was not a success factor in trade and commerce. So why did it become so when it did? That’s worth exploring.

I don’t think we are digressing to suggest that the spread of English across continental America was facilitated by ethnic cleansing and displacement. Native American languages did not disappear because they were useless, but because villages were burnt, people uprooted from their homes and those that survived were forced to learn an alien language (the new Australian parliament has just apologized to the ‘lost generations’ of indigenous peoples whose children were forcibly relocated and taught English, a practice which only ended in the 1960s).

Based therefore of even a small sample of the historical record, there is thus sufficient justification to claim the spread of major languages such as English (and French in west Africa and Spanish in Latin America) has been made possible through violent political domination. Ergo, injustice.

There are of course other scenarios where political domination have not led to language domination. After the western Roman empire was over-run by Germanic tribes in the fifth century A.D., their languages failed to take hold in the ex-dominions of Iberia, Gaul and the Italian peninsular. Instead, derivatives of Latin prevailed. This probably has more to do with the system of governance and the expected relationship over local resources than it did with any inherent strength or weakness of Germanic tongues. More recently, French held on for two hundred years as the court language in Britain after 1066 but it never really made it beyond the royal entourage anyway.

The reason I choose to refer to language elimination as an unjust act is therefore deliberate. It is to shift the terms of debate away from narrow utilitarian interpretations of value. Sure, it’s fine to have a basic grasp of common languages to enable simple interaction. But I would be sad to see, for instance, the last of the Trobriand Islanders die in silence in their homes in the Pacific. They have dozens of words for blue but none for black, for instance. Their conceptualization of colour is unique to the ecology to which they belong and attached to that a cosmonogy and world of their own. If it’s not too crude an analogy, language diversity is essential for cultural diversity.

To suggest that some languages are expendable because they do not stand up to modern measures of usefulness is not far removed from the racist justification for eliminating savages for being lazy, naked and un-Christian. They never died out, those junglees; they were squeezed and harassed out of existence. And the same is happening today with languages, both by ommission and commission.

One final thought for now: there is an obvious reductionism in the way one uses analogies of competition to state the merits and demerits of languages. This is the culture of neo-liberalism speaking, where everything in human life is viewed through the filters of utility and measurement. If it was indeed the case that languages die out because of individual choice, then we would be left speaking very few languages very soon. But people choose to retain languages for other non-material calculations: emotional, cultural, access to the past, &c.

The irony is, languages are dying out and dying out fast. Not because of individual choices, but because of deliberate action that our descendents will find easier to brand as immoral than we might do today.

“I accept that there are cases of demonstrable ethnic repression where one language is favoured, but on the whole i think the ‘dying out’ is due to individual choice”

I really disagree. As Roger points out in #11, it is mostly born out of state policy with political motives. Take for example the historical suppression of the Kurdish language in Turkey or Berber in N. Africa. The Basques in Spain up until a little while ago were forbidden from learning their own language during Franco’s time; there has been a similar situation (perhaps changed by now) in Tibet with the implementation of Mandarin/Cantonese (not sure which one). And not many people know this, but there is a small but gathering momentum in Punjab, Pakistan for chucking Urdu in favor of Punjabi; many feel that Urdu is an imposition that has sidelined the regional tongue which people feel reflects their own heritage.

Eliminating and/or suppressing languages which can lead to a language dying out is an act of nationalism and stamping out diversity and/or pre-empting future desires to be different from the official state and culture. Once this becomes institutionalized, you progressively lose the necessary literacy to have literature, proper usage, etc in that said language. You can’t expect an entire generation that has barely been able to learn a language to start speaking and reading it fluently and teaching it to their children while another language is taught in schools and spoken all around.

And also, different ways and aspects of thinking. As someone who speaks several languages, there are many terms and concepts that are not easily translatable from one language to another; even if they are translated, it never entirely captures the concept expressed in the original language.

And also, the global economy.

I accept that there are cases of demonstrable ethnic repression where one language is favoured, but on the whole i think the ‘dying out’ is due to individual choice. Anyone is free to prevent language elimination by learning a language in danger of extinction. None of us bother learning those languages because its useless – they would not aid in communicating with anybody, and that ultimately is the litmus test for a language.

As to the relatively modest nature of the Eyak language community, I don’t think we can say that any one language is less valuable than another by virtue of the number of people who speak it. What then is the threshold below which a language is deemed worth keeping? That would be a chilling call to make and I doubt any reader of this website would want to make it. On the contrary, we should be pressuring public officials to act to protect and promote languages which, as Roger suggests, are a store of knowledge that could disappear with their last speaker.

Now obviously there are situations where ethnic groups are prevented from practising their culture but i don’t think the article was referring to that.

For one thing each language is distinct and interesting in its own right and so worth looking at. Furthermore, the spread of English doesn’t seem to help communication- it males low level communication easier, but it seems to damage english as a vehicle for cmmunication at any other level. Finally there’s the Sapir-Whorfe hypothesis that the nature of a language determines what we can communicate, which means that the extinction of a language means the extinction of possible ideas.

For the sake of argument if we assume all people are free to communicate as they wish then the natural elimination of certain languages isn’t a ‘bad’ thing. Different languages obviously enrich humanity, but you can’t rage against the dying of the light; after all we’re free to learn any of those dying languages but choose not to. Ultimately if a better language for communication comes along we use it, that is progress.

Anyway didn’t know you had become a PP editor, congratulations. shouldn’t the old list of editors be updated with yourself and Rumbold?

‘This is a guest post by Hannan who is launching his new blog East of the Equator.’

Is this Hannan you Sid?