Endangered languages are a
reality in many parts of the world and since at least the nineteen nineties, thanks
to the influential work by Professor Ken Hale and other endangered language
linguists, language death has been viewed in many countries, including India,
as a societal problem that needs to be addressed urgently and seriously. It would
be entirely reasonable to suggest that those whose languages are safe, must try
to stop the extinction of languages, spoken by the marginalized speech
communities. Many sensitive speakers of extinct languages, who had to shift to
other languages under compelling circumstances, have a sense of disturbed
identity and sometimes even a feeling of lack of self-confidence.
So enabling action is needed to
preserve endangered languages. Now, it may sound very unfeeling and unjust, but
the fact remains that not all severely endangered languages can be saved from
extinction. An unsentimental and reasonable plan of action would be to classify
these languages into two broad categories: (a) those that have a good chance to
be preserved and (b) those that are so severely endangered – at the “moribund”
state - that realistically, they cannot be saved. This distinction may be there
in the minds of many endangered language scholars, activists and policy-makers
themselves, but they do not say so in public, quite understandably, because it
would be socially incorrect to say so.
We suggest that affirmative
action would not be the same for both. Perhaps the best way to revitalize an
endangered language of the category “a” would be to provide it a domain of use
where there would be no alternative to it. This can happen if the State ensures
that primary education is imparted in the child’s mother tongue and the adults
of the concerned speech community attain literacy in their own language. Equally
importantly, there is need for strong social support, as suggested above. Endangered
language activists should use every platform to sensitize the speakers of the
relevant dominant language(s) about the importance of preserving the languages
under threat. At the same time, they must try to persuade the leaders of the
community of endangered language speakers about the benefits of early education
in the mother tongue. The preparation of teaching material for primary school
children, based on sound pedagogical principles, teachers’ manuals, story
books, etc. in such languages must become the academic part of the endangered
language activism. If the preservation of a certain language is the objective,
rather than the archiving of that language, then the documentation of those
resources of the language that are directly needed for the preparation of the
teaching materials at the primary education level must receive priority: basic
vocabulary, including the more commonly used words, word formation devices,
basic syntax (sentence construction) and conversational interactions in a
variety of day-to-day contexts, for instance. Our endangered language projects
concerned with the languages of the category (a), must not follow objectives,
not directly related to the preparation of the teaching materials, and the competent
agency should monitor that this happens. It must also be ensured that the
teachers of such languages, who for quite some time would have to be the
outsiders to the relevant speech community, must have not only competence in
the relevant language but also the right attitude to it. They must not think that their language is
superior to the (endangered) language they are teaching.
Now, the nature of documentation
has to be different in the case of the more severely endangered languages,
which are not in a position to be saved. These languages have to be archived.
In the case of such a language, the documentation would be delinked from the
production of teaching material and must be exhaustive, so that the future
researchers - linguists, ecologists, historians, including the historians of culture,
anthropologists, among others – would have a clear idea of the language.
Comprehensive documentation is necessary for yet another reason. It is possible
that a future generation of such a language would be interested in reviving
their language, although this would be a rather rare case. For that to happen,
documentation of only the lexicon and the grammar would be inadequate. A
language cannot be revived if only its lexicon and grammar are available.
Therefore, documentation must include a range of discourses, imaginative and
knowledge-based, oral and written.
Incidentally, probably the most known case of
the revival of a language till now, is that of Hebrew. However, it must be
noted that it had never really totally gone out of use; it had never become
extinct, like, say, Aka-Bo. In course of time, the use of this developed
language got restricted to only sacred domains. Its revitalization has meant
its being used in day-to-day conversation and in a range of modern, secular
contexts. If that had not happened, which was due, ignoring many details, more
to the will of the speakers and their collective effort in this direction, than
anything else, strong support for the language and its development would not
have come from the state. Now, this cannot obviously be said for the vast
majority of languages under threat today in our country.
