Saving Our Linguistic Heritage: Protecting Global Language Diversity in Peril
By a study of 2,400 languages, half of the world’s linguistic diversity—which includes the range of languages spoken around the globe as well as the various dialects, accents, and styles of speaking within each language—is in danger.
Currently, there are more than 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, some of which have millions of speakers while others only have a few hundred. Since it enables cultural expression and communication across many communities, language diversity is crucial. Every language has a distinctive past, present, and style of thinking. We can make sure that these cultural nuances are not lost by preserving and promoting language diversity.
In a recent work published in Science Advances, was introduced – Grambank, a huge database of the language grammar. With the help of this resource, we may respond to a variety of linguistic research queries and determine how much grammatical diversity we may lose if the problem is not resolved. The results are worrisome: we are losing languages, we are losing language diversity, and unless we act, these windows into our common history will be closed.
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One such study revealed alarming data that makes one consider that some regions of the world, such as South America and Australia, may eventually lose all of their natural linguistic diversity. Even other regions with linguistic contexts that are more stable, such as the Pacific, South-East Asia, and Europe, still show a sharp loss of about 25%.
Without persistent support for language revitalization, many people will suffer and our shared linguistic window into human history, cognition, and culture would severely deteriorate. The United Nations has declared 2022–2032 to be the Decade of Indigenous Languages.
Climate crisis and loss of languages
A language is lost every forty days. According to linguists, the climatic catastrophe is exacerbating this “catastrophic” loss. Conservative projections indicate that by the end of the century, half of the 7,000 languages that are currently spoken will have vanished. The majority of Indigenous languages in Australia, the US, South Africa, and Argentina were vanished by the 1920s.
The “final nail in the coffin” for many Indigenous languages and the knowledge they represent, according to many people today, is the climate issue. Globalization and migration, as communities relocate to areas where their language is neither spoken nor valued, are major contributors to this loss of languages.
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Vanuatu is an island country in the South Pacific with a total area of 12,189 square kilometers. It contains 110 languages, making it the country with the highest density of languages on Earth. Furthermore, it is one of the nations most at risk from the climate issue. According to the New Zealand Mori language commission, one out of every five languages spoken worldwide originates from the Pacific. Every Indigenous language that is lost forever also loses the ideas, cultures, traditions, and wisdom it once held.
Although the impacts of global warming on language have not been thoroughly investigated, it has already exposed millions of people to food insecurity, water shortages, and eviction from their homes due to an increase in heatwaves, droughts, floods, and sea level rise. Internal displacement due to disasters, the majority of which were weather-related, increased to 23.7 million in 2021 from 18.8 million in 2018. The Pacific island republics in the region were the worst affected by the population over the past ten years, followed by Asia and the Middle East.
Conclusion
According to studies, the suppression of Indigenous languages is linked to mental health issues, but the opposite is also sometimes true. Indigenous kids who can speak their original tongue are less likely to use alcohol or other illegal drugs at high doses and are less likely to be exposed to violence, according to a study conducted in Bangladesh.
There are some encouraging developments, too, including the revival of Indigenous languages in New Zealand and Hawaii.
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Only 2,000 Hawaiian native speakers could still be found in the 1970s, and the majority of them were in their seventh decade of life. Nevertheless, supporters started “immersion schools” where students are taught in Hawaiian. More than 18,700 people currently speak it. In the 1970s, just 5% of young Mori people in New Zealand spoke the language; today, more than 25% do, partly as a result of Mori’s efforts supported by the government.
The idea is that when governments take an initiative so will communities work along the lines of preserving such indigenous languages that are more or less losing their value in today’s society. Owing to the standardization of very few languages in comparison, worldwide to the dearth of encouragement towards natives and tribals who are the custodians of languages rich in culture, we today are witnessing this threat.
