UNESCO declared february 21 as the International Mother Language Day in 1999.Since 2000, it is observed every year all over the world.This is done to promote cultural diversity and mutilingualism.The tenth International Mother language day falls on Feb 21,2009.This year IML day assumes greater significance on two accounts.The Year long celebrations of the 'International Year of Languages' comes to close on the same day.Secondly,few days ago UNESCO has released its new Atlas of World Languages.The new Atlas says out of the 6900 languages currently spoken in world,roughly2500 are endangered.The UNESCO atlas compiled in 2001 listed 900 languages as endangered.But in a span of 8 years the number of languages that are endangered has risen to 2500 world over.The most disturbing fact is that India tops the list with the maximum number of endangered languages followed by USA and Indonesia.The tally is as follows.India is likely to lose 196 languages,USA 192 and Indonesia 147.According to UNESCO these languages are in the danger of disappearing in due course.One might wonder as to how can a language disappear?But it does happen.There is a gradual decline in the no of persons using the language and finally the language disappears.UNESCO stresses multi lingual approaches in education along with mother tounge.There are five levels before a language becomes finally extinct.They are unsafe, definitely endangered, severely endangered, critically endangered and extinct.This is the classification made by UNESCO.Statistics reveal nearly 200 languages became extinct in the last 3 generations.538 are critically endangered,502 severely endangered, 632 definitely endangered and 607 unsafe.There are 199 languages with less than 10 speakers and 178 others with10 to 50.When a language dies,along with ,the cultural heritage and traditions of that language dies.The greatest linguistic diversity can be seen in Papua New Guinea where approximatley 800 languages are spoken.It is astonishing that for such large diversity,the situation of endangered languages is not so alarming in Papua Guinea.Countries like India,USA,Indonesia,Mexico and Brazil have great language diversities.But here the situation is diferent.The number of endangered languages are high in these countries. Certain extinct languages are being reinitiated and revitalised by experts.But how far this will succeed remains to be seen.If one looks at the no of languages and number of speakers,there is a distribution skew.9 % of the world population speak just 4% of the languages.The top 10 languages of the world are Mandarin (chinese),English,Hindi/Urudu,Spanish,Russian,Arabic,Bengali,Portugese,Malay-Indonesian and F rench.Most of the small and endangered languages do not have a script.It is just a spoken language.Until 2 decades ago 'sourashtra' a dialect of Gujarati in southern Tamil nadu did not have any script of their own.It was only a spoken language.Now they have adopted Devnagiri as their script.There is an endangered Language Project which aims at providing documentation for such languages.They work with endangered language communities to record linguistic diversity and encourage cultural human diversity.It is important to preserve every language,for they define the communitie's culture.Endangered languages are more in North East in India.Delhi university offers research facilities for endangered languages of North East and to document them.The number of living speakers of language,the mean age of fluent speakers of the language,percentage of younger generation acquiring knoweldge of the language are the indicators of the decline of a language.Konkani spoken in South India has two dialects.One is used for informal talk and the other variant is used to convey messages secretly to community members.Both of them have survived .As long as number of active speakers of a language does not decline to a dangerous level that language will survive. On February 21st let us all resolve to promote our Mother Language religiously and ensure it does not get into any of the five levels of an endangered language. 
S.Kalyanasundar -A trilingual blogger in English,Tamil and Malayalam
Friday, February 20, 2009
International Mother Language day - Feb 21
UNESCO declared february 21 as the International Mother Language Day in 1999.Since 2000, it is observed every year all over the world.This is done to promote cultural diversity and mutilingualism.The tenth International Mother language day falls on Feb 21,2009.This year IML day assumes greater significance on two accounts.The Year long celebrations of the 'International Year of Languages' comes to close on the same day.Secondly,few days ago UNESCO has released its new Atlas of World Languages.The new Atlas says out of the 6900 languages currently spoken in world,roughly2500 are endangered.The UNESCO atlas compiled in 2001 listed 900 languages as endangered.But in a span of 8 years the number of languages that are endangered has risen to 2500 world over.The most disturbing fact is that India tops the list with the maximum number of endangered languages followed by USA and Indonesia.The tally is as follows.India is likely to lose 196 languages,USA 192 and Indonesia 147.According to UNESCO these languages are in the danger of disappearing in due course.One might wonder as to how can a language disappear?But it does happen.There is a gradual decline in the no of persons using the language and finally the language disappears.UNESCO stresses multi lingual approaches in education along with mother tounge.There are five levels before a language becomes finally extinct.They are unsafe, definitely endangered, severely endangered, critically endangered and extinct.This is the classification made by UNESCO.Statistics reveal nearly 200 languages became extinct in the last 3 generations.538 are critically endangered,502 severely endangered, 632 definitely endangered and 607 unsafe.There are 199 languages with less than 10 speakers and 178 others with10 to 50.When a language dies,along with ,the cultural heritage and traditions of that language dies.The greatest linguistic diversity can be seen in Papua New Guinea where approximatley 800 languages are spoken.It is astonishing that for such large diversity,the situation of endangered languages is not so alarming in Papua Guinea.Countries like India,USA,Indonesia,Mexico and Brazil have great language diversities.But here the situation is diferent.The number of endangered languages are high in these countries. Certain extinct languages are being reinitiated and revitalised by experts.But how far this will succeed remains to be seen.If one looks at the no of languages and number of speakers,there is a distribution skew.9 % of the world population speak just 4% of the languages.The top 10 languages of the world are Mandarin (chinese),English,Hindi/Urudu,Spanish,Russian,Arabic,Bengali,Portugese,Malay-Indonesian and F rench.Most of the small and endangered languages do not have a script.It is just a spoken language.Until 2 decades ago 'sourashtra' a dialect of Gujarati in southern Tamil nadu did not have any script of their own.It was only a spoken language.Now they have adopted Devnagiri as their script.There is an endangered Language Project which aims at providing documentation for such languages.They work with endangered language communities to record linguistic diversity and encourage cultural human diversity.It is important to preserve every language,for they define the communitie's culture.Endangered languages are more in North East in India.Delhi university offers research facilities for endangered languages of North East and to document them.The number of living speakers of language,the mean age of fluent speakers of the language,percentage of younger generation acquiring knoweldge of the language are the indicators of the decline of a language.Konkani spoken in South India has two dialects.One is used for informal talk and the other variant is used to convey messages secretly to community members.Both of them have survived .As long as number of active speakers of a language does not decline to a dangerous level that language will survive. On February 21st let us all resolve to promote our Mother Language religiously and ensure it does not get into any of the five levels of an endangered language. 
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sourashtra is also an endangered language, I think.
ReplyDeleteI don't think so . There are 4 stages before a language becomes an endangered language. The classification is as follows ."Vulnerable: Most children speak the language, but it may be restricted to certain domains (e.g., home).Definitely endangered: Children no longer learn the language as mother tongue in the home. Severely endangered: Language is spoken by grandparents and older generations; while the parent generation may understand it, they do not speak it to children or among themselves.Critically endangered: The youngest speakers are grandparents and older, and they speak the language partially and infrequently. "It may take centuries for a language to become endangered . If sourashtra language speakers don't wake up now ,there is surely a danger for this to happen ,may be after centuries. The native speakers of the language must take efforts to keep the language alive.
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Already the language has borrowed lot of words form Tamil,Telugu and Kannada. I do not know how many sourasthrians can a read a book in their language.But sourashtra as spoken in Tamilnadu is mostly a spoken language . Though Sourashtra had its own sript ,they adopted Devanagiri as their script later . But I believe it is rearely being used .This will be dangerous.For a language to remain alive there should be written documents in that language and it should be developed constantly.Witrh the concentration of more Sourashtrians in Madurai, at least in Madurai schools ,Sourashtra can be taught as a language from primary school level as an optional language .But the problem would be to get proficient teachers .If this is not done,may be after centuries sourashtra could get in to the endangered language list . Hard croe sourashtrians do believe some of the words used by their fore fathers are not in vogue today . Why does this happen? .Because successive generations do not use those words and they are replaced by a local dialect word. I think Sourashtra is currently in the vulnerable category . Let native sourashtra speakers come together and take steps to stop sourashtra going in to next levels .
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