Endangered Languages Library

Qaqasauraq. Noun. The modern Inupiaq term for a computer. Loosely translated, it means “little brain.”

Ready to learn more? Fire up the qaqasauraq for the latest of three new computer programs designed to teach variations of the fading Alaska Native language.

The North Slope Borough and Rosetta Stone software company plan to unveil a program this spring specially designed to teach the North Slope Inupiaq dialect, using the photos and voices of Inupiaq people recorded in Barrow.

There are as few as 1,500 fluent speakers of Inupiaq in Alaska, estimates Fairbanks linguist Michael Krauss. Once, it was the primary language of the northern and northwest regions of the state.

Barrow-born Edna MacLean, a former Inupiaq professor for the University of Alaska Fairbanks, spent two years working on the Inupiaq program. She translated thousands of words and phrases from English to the North Slope Inupiaq dialect of the Inuit language.

The job is nearly done. Soon the program will be available to schools and households. Just in time for Inupiaq language experts like MacLean, 66.

Read the full article.

Photo from the intrepid social sciences teacher currently teaching  in an Inupiaq village on the Seward Peninsula.

A fun video from busuu.com, a website for language learning. Busuu is a language from northwest Cameroon and was reported to have 8 speakers back in 1986 by a certain R. Breton (a prolific cataloguer of African languages, if I may note), according to the Ethnologue. It’s highly likely those 8 are not alive today. A user comment on the video claims the actors are speaking are Njikun, which isn’t listed on Ethnologue but is catalogued in “A Dictionary of Cameroon English Usage” by Jean-Paul Kouega (page 44, referring to work done by Dieu and Renaud, 1983). Regardless of its objectives or how it was made, it hopefully still highlights the plight of languages with few speakers.

A New York Times article from April of this year highlights the effort of the Endangered Language Alliance, a group of individuals who have taken upon the mighty task of working towards documenting languages that are endangered, starting with the many communities in New York City. Some experts estimate there are as many as 800 languages spoken there, far more than official census records show. The immigrants who have flocked to the city give rise for many opportunities to investigate the pockets of languages that continue to be spoken – the challenge, no doubt, is to find them.

On Long Island, researchers have found several people fluent in Mandaic, a Persian variation of Aramaic spoken by a few hundred people around the world. One of them, Dakhil Shooshtary, 76, a retired jeweler who settled on Long Island from Iran 45 years ago, is compiling a Mandaic dictionary.

The ELA has organized a few town meetings as well as local lectures at CUNY. If you’re in the area, be sure to follow their progress.

Hawaiian, one of two official languages in the state of Hawaii, is spoken by 8,000 of 400,000 ethnic Hawaiians and used in all domains, including oral literature, songs, and religion. This is a huge drop from the 37,000 native speakers in the 19th century, as travel to and from Hawaiia sharply increased and the status of Hawaiian dropped. As the number of immigrants and the status of English continued to rise, English became “the medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools” according to the 1896 Laws of the Republic of Hawaii. Most importantly, the native speakers wanted their children to speak English in order to succeed, so they refrained from using Hawaiian at home.

In recent decades, there have been many efforts to promote the language. The first Punana Leo, which is an immersion preschool for children between the ages of two and five years old, was opened on September 4, 1984. Later, the Kula Kaiapuni, a system of immersion schools from elementary to high school, was opened as a continuation of the Punana Leo. The University of Hawaii offers a BA in the Hawaiian language and, in 1998, established the first teacher preparation program specifically aimed at preparing Kula Kaiapuni teachers. Other programs such as the Ke A’a Makalei project have been instituted to expand Hawaiian into other domains outside the classroom, such as a Hawaiian-speaking baseball league.

Today, there are 11 Punana Leo preschools and 1500 students in grades kindergarten to grade 12 in the Kula Kaiapuni program. In 1999, the first class of students entirely educated in the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program graduated from high school. Hawaiian has the most developed movement in indigenous language-medium education in the United States.

Daryl Baldwin, pioneer of the Miami language revitalization effort

Miami is a Native American language formerly spoken in the United States. It was spoken around the Midwest including Illinois, Missouri, Indiana and places along the Mississippi. The language was spoken by the Inoca, Kaskaskia, Peoria, Tamaroa, Cahokia, and Mitchigamea tribes. During colonization the speakers of Miami were displaced from their territories into northeastern Oklahoma.

Despite the lack of speakers there is a strong revitalization effort. The first revitalization effort came from a man named Daryl Baldwin. He saw the importance of keeping his culture and language alive and started a summer camp where he taught children Miami language and culture. He believed that if he was able to spark interest in the youth about Miami he would be able to create a group of people who where willing to help revive the language and culture. Furthermore he has raised his children as first-generation native Miami speakers. One of the strongest revitalization efforts today comes from The Myaamia Project at Miami University. They state their goals as the exploration and the use of technology for the development and transmission of language and culture.

The creation of computer based interactive educational programs has sparked interest in Miami language and culture. Such language revitalization efforts are made difficult by the fact that there is no one to teach the language: there is the need for the language to be reconstructed from past documentation of the language, and Miami has been fortunate enough in having plenty of such resources to work from.

In the world today there are roughly 6500 languages, of which less than 30 will have more than 2000 speakers. The reason we say roughly is because it is very difficult to classify what is a distinct language. There is a fine line between when a language is the same language with a different dialect or should be considered a completely new language. After a quick search of the internet this discrepancy is very obvious. Some of the numbers that I came across were, 6500, 6912, 6,809. The final number is from a source called ethnologue.com which is one of the most comprehensive sources for language classification which we have.

It is important to take the numbers associated with languages and language loss with a grain of salt. The numbers should be used to give an overall sense of trends and not as accurate representations of the actual number of languages.

Of the 6809 languages which Ethnologue lists they label 750 of them as extinct or nearly extinct. Of the 300 indigenous languages to North America it is estimated that by 2050 that there will be less then 30 languages. It is estimated that overall there are 3000 endangered languages (classified as less then 2000 speakers or with a significant portion of the speakers being over 50 years old). As is evident from these numbers languages loss is very prevalent. You might be thinking at this point, I understand languages are dying but so what?

To understand the importance of the loss it is important to understand what language does for a community. A language is developed by a community over hundreds of years. Over this time the knowledge and culture is stored in the language. Every time a language is lost so is a perspective of the world. Oftentimes there are words in a language which not be translated to any other language. Whether it is a word for a plant which has yet to be classified or for a specific emotion which others could not express as well. The more perspectives we have on the world the better we can hope to understand it.

Welcome to the brand new website of Endangered-Languages.com. Though this site has existed since 2008, it is being given a minor facelift in the hopes of making it easier to maintain and reliably update.