This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whisper. And it’s a dying whisper. According to a report in a recent issue of the journal, Nature, no less than 471 languages around the world—out of a total of 6,800 which have been inventoried—are in imminent danger of becoming extinct. The study discovered 46 languages of which there is only one speaker. When those 46 individuals die, the 46 separate languages they represent will die with them.
In a poignant anecdote, the study recounts the case of a woman in Namibia who believed she was the only surviving speaker of her native tongue. However, researchers found another person who spoke this language, and set up a radio contact so that the only two speakers of this tongue could converse with each other.
Among the other almost extinct languages are Bung, spoken by three people in Cameroon, and Abaga, with five speakers in Papua New Guinea. Another linguist, Anthony Trail, has identified 30 Khoisan dialects used by African Bushmen, which consist of a series of clicking sounds without vowels or consonants as we know them. While many environmentalists have warned about the irreparable damage caused by the terminal destruction of flora and fauna, the death of languages has not received the attention it deserves.
A social Darwinian might argue that a language is only a currency of communication, and there is nothing sacrosanct in it. Like any other currency no longer in use because a better, more widely acceptable one has become available, obsolete languages must perish by the laws of nature’s market. At best, they might be put in the equivalent of linguistic zoos or museums, as cultural curiosities of interest only to specialists.
Such a survival-of-the-fittest view, however, misses out on a central point: A language does not merely reflect a social or cultural reality; it creates it. So, when a language dies out, along with it perish many human mores and traits which it embodied. For instance, in the Eskimo language of Inuit, there are as many as 11 different words for different kinds of snow. Yet, there is no word for romantic or individualised love. This is not because Inuit speakers are incapable of affection. On the contrary, their social structure is bedrocked on community bonding, which precludes the need for any one tribal member to form special attachments with any other single member, including children and the elderly, who are collectively looked after.
Language textures and shapes our world, and our responses to it and to each other. This is why political propagandists have invariably used language, mutating it where necessary, to further their ends. Linguistic chauvinism has been witnessed everywhere, from the propagation of Hebrew to aid Israeli expansion to the attempts to Sanskritise Hindi, and ‘cleanse’ it of supposedly ‘foreign’ elements like Urdu.
Perhaps the most belligerently marketed language has been English. Forget the many ‘native’ tongues it has silenced; even many languages of ‘advanced’ societies such as the French have developed a pronounced and defensive Anglophobia, with the Academie Francaise fighting a vain rearguard action against the incursions of Franglais such as ‘le weekend’ and ‘le bifstek’.
But by and large, English has ruled supreme. However, its very success may one day prove its downfall. So promiscuous has been its cohabitation that English has spawned a brood of by-blows of varying shades, in various climes. From our own Hinglish to Jamlish, or Jamaican English, with many wild oats sown in between. When Prince Philip addressed a public gathering in Tonga, in deference to the local pidgin English, he described himself as “Fella belong Mrs Queen”. Philip’s avowed ownership is his business. But many would dispute the proprietary rights of his spouse over a language which increasingly is a ‘lingo no longer belong Mrs Queen’.
Has this phenomenon—the semantic equivalent of the tandoori pizza and the shakahari Big Mac—enriched or impoverished our increasingly homogenised world? Is such linguistic glocalisation our only defence against the tidal wave of globalisation of the Net and satellite television?
In the brave new world of the future waiting to be spoken, only one thing is clear: In the end, as in the beginning, is the word. And this time around, it’ll probably be in SMSes. Gr8, no?
Jug Suraiya
Writer, columnist and author of several books
jugsuraiya@gmail.com