Crystal presents five arguments: from the general value of diversity, from the value of languages as expressions of identity, as repositories of history, as part of the sum of human knowledge, and as interesting subjects in their own right.
But the most important point of all is the fact that language is inseparably connected with culture. So when a language is on the verge of death, the society around the language is always too. A rivalry between cultures and its result is a part of the regular course of the world, where the stronger defeats and conquers the weaker one.
And it can be considered as one of the world’s worst calamities, when a culture dies, and all the wisdom and cultural treasures, such as the language, dies with it.
2.3 “Russian in Latvia”
A very interesting example for Language in conjunction with Ethnicity was brought up by Steven C. Johnson, an Associated Press reporter who lives and works in Latvia (see Johnson 1999).
Things changed after the fall of the Soviet empire in 1991. In newly independent nations such as Latvia, the linguistic minority had become the majority. Former captive nations began righting the wrongs of decades of Russification. (Johnson 1999)
After half a century of Soviet influence, Latvian was almost extinct. As any superpower in history did, the Soviet-Union tried to form one homogenous state out of the many cultures which were held together by a common border. Now, the native Latvian people’s anger is directed towards the hundred thousands of Russians who have immigrated the country during the past 50 years.
It seems paradox, but the measures taken by the Latvian government are quite similar to e.g. the ones taken by the British Crown to extinct the Aboriginal culture of Australia. “Latvian-only” signs went up, while Russian or bilingual signs were successively scratched out. The Parliament passed laws that forced the people to use Latvian at public events, and set up a corps of language officers to ensure that the population knows enough Latvian to get along.
The government’s actions do also throw up certain questions of ethic and morale: Is it justified to discriminate 40% of the population whose mother tongue is Russian, in order to keep the superior status of the Latvian language? Or, is the systematic extinction of a language (which is, as seen above, inseparably connected with its culture which is destroyed too) less bad if there are millions of speakers left located on another spot of the world?
3. Language Loss
3.1 Introduction
In his book Language Death, David Crystal starts by looking at the scale of the threat to minority languages. There are debates over the definition of "language" and estimates of the number of languages vary, but a number somewhere around 6000 is plausible. Perhaps more important is the distribution of speakers: Only 4% of languages are accounting for 96% of people and 25% having fewer than 1000 speakers.
There are different ways of classifying "danger levels", but there is no doubt that a large number of languages face extinction in the immediate future, while in the longer-term even quite widely spoken languages may be in danger. (see Crystal 2000:10)
According to SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics) and “The Ethnologue”, an online Library on endangered Languages, almost half of the 6800 languages in the world are considered to be “critically” endangered. That means that parents are no longer teaching the language to their children and are not using it actively in everyday matters (cf The Ethnologue, 2002).
In Australia, for example, the vicious circle started by the European colonization. The Western society introduced products, such as food, clothes, means of transport and alcohol, which were new for Indigenous people. Australia’s Indigenous Languages proved incapable of adapting to this new, western way of life and way of thinking. The development of new technologies, especially in the area of communication, clearly promotes the English language. The English media controlled contemporary life at the expense of Indigenous traditions and languages. The modern world had simply become to fast for Australia’s Indigenous languages.
These factors, which are all directly or indirectly connected with each other, show the high complexity of the process of language loss. The contact with the white people caused the extinction of the formerly strong bond between language, landscape and identity among Aboriginal people. Annette Schmidt, an Australian Linguist, calls this process “the downward spiral of reduced language use and loss” and describes it the following way:
Figure 2:
The downward spiral of reduced language use (Schmidt 1990)
3.2 Five stages of language Loss
Robert M.W. Dixon, an Australian Linguist has brought some light into the controversial issue of language loss, and tried to answer the question when a language cannot be revived any more. He established a classification of 5 stages of language loss:
STAGE 1: Language X is used as the first language by a full community of hundreds of people and is used in every aspect of their daily lives. Some of these people will also know other languages (another Australian language, or English, or both) but only as a second language. Everyone thinks in language X.
STAGE 2: Some people still have X as their first language (and think in it) but for others it is a second language, with English as the preferred medium (and these people may think in English or in a mixture of English and X.) At this stage the language is still maintained in its traditional form, with the original phonetics, grammar and vocabulary (although the second language speakers will not have so wide a vocabulary as traditional speakers).
STAGE 3: Only a few old people still have X as their first language. For most of the community, English is the dominant language (which they think in). Some of those with X as a second language may still speak it in a fairly traditional way, but younger people tend to use a simplified form of the language, perhaps putting together words from X in English word order. The original conceptual system of X may have been replaced by the English system. Instead of having separate labels for mother’s brother and father’s brother (relations that have a quite different status within the kinship systems of every Australian tribe) they may use one label to cover both kinds of kin – this could be a word from X whose meaning has been altered, or just the English uncle.
STAGE 4: Nobody now knows the full, original form of X; no one could fully understand a tape recording made of a traditional speaker on or two generations before. Some members of the community speak a modified version of X, with simplified grammar; at most they will know a few hundred words. Even this is likely to be mixed in amongst English sentences. The younger people speak a variety of English that includes just a few words from X.
STAGE 5: Everyone in the community speaks, and thinks, in English. There may be a few words from X still used but these are treated grammatically as if they were English words (with plural –s, past tense –ed, and so on).
(Dixon 1989:28-29)
3.3 When is language loss not reversible anymore?
Again, opinions are divided on the topic of the reversibility of language loss. A reasonable approach is done by Schmidt (1990:106): “the likelihood of ‘success’ in Aboriginal language revival depends very much on how the term is defined”. That means that it is better to define the term in a more modest way. Reviving certain words and phrases, and bringing the extinct language to a status, comparable to ancient Greek or Latin could be seen as the best, realistic result.
4. Language Revival
4.1 Forms of Language Revival
After this set of information about the pessimistic and dull situation of minority languages, one question might arise: What can be done about it? Or even: What can we do about it?
Steve Johnson, an Australian linguist who dealt with endangered Aboriginal languages mainly, distinguishes between four types of Language Revival, for each of them he has a special term:
Language continuation
Here we have a language still being used by and between families for all situations and their daily life. Any maintenance efforts would most likely be aimed at helping this state of affairs to continue.
Language renewal
In this situation the language is still fully used by adults, but the children are no longer actively speaking it. A strong effort must be made either to return to a state where children again use the language as their own, or at least acquire it as they become adults, if the speakers want their language to continue in daily use.
Language revival
Very few older people still know the language. It will be necessary to teach adults as well as children if the language is to be spoken again, and to decide where and how it should be used.
Language resurrection
All speakers of the language have died. The only source of the language is written or taped material. If it is to come into use again, then it will have to be taught by people who have learnt it second hand from these materials, and the result will almost certainly not be exactly the same as the original language.
(Johnson 1987:54)
The main goal of all efforts in language maintenance and revival is to keep or build up a strong and working transmission link. That means that the language has to be spoken by parents and their children in every situation of their lives. If that transmission link is destroyed, the relationship between children, their clan and their cultural heritage is heavily disturbed. Then, it is almost impossible to rebuild it, at least it would take an enormous amount of time.
Joshua A. Fishman claims that all languages independent from the stage in which they are in, can be reversed on the condition that the appropriate measures are taken and the process is given enough time. (Fishman 1991:12)
R.M.W. Dixon (cf 1989:31-33) describes the possibilities in a more realistic way. Although, Fishman’s thesis can be seen as basically right, one must not forget that there are limits; limits which are set by reality. Dixon claims that language at Stage 2 of his 5 stages of language loss chart have the greatest and most realistic likelihood to be revived. He proposes measures like full bilingual education, videos recording traditional stories and legends which motivate people to use their Indigenous language more frequently in everyday life. An example could be, trips into the nature, where children get a chance to become familiar with the Indigenous names of plants and animals. In addition, the children get a chance to identify with their cultural heritage.
4.2 Hebrew
Jack Fellman, an American Linguist, who lives in Israel and works at the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Languages at Bar-Ilan University, wrote a very interesting essay about a man called “Eliezer Ben-Yehuda” (cf Fellman, 2002). This man was “the one” pioneer in the revival of the Hebrew language between 1881 and 1908. Ben-Yehuda was born Eliezer Yitzhak Perelman, in the Lithuanian village of Luzhky on January 7, 1858. As a typically Jewish child, he had to learn Hebrew as a part of his religious upbringing. His parents sent him to a Talmudic academy, hoping he would become a rabbi. But Eliezer Ben-Yehuda had another dream: The restoration of ancient nations like Greece, Italy and the revitalization of Bulgaria during the early 19th century had a deep impact on him, and he believed that the Jews deserved an own nation too (namely the sovereign state of Israel - which was finally proclaimed in 1948).
For everything there is needed only one wise, clever and active man, with the initiative to devote all his energies to it, and the matter will progress, all obstacles in the way notwithstanding... In every new event, every step, even the smallest in the path of progress, it is necessary that there be one pioneer who will lead the way without leaving any possibility of turning back. (Ben-Yehuda 1908)
And this was exactly the guideline he followed during his entire lifetime. He knew that the only chance for a successful revival would be a child, brought up with Hebrew as his mother-tongue. So he persuaded his wife, to raise their boy, Ben-Zion Ben-Yehuda, as the first all-Hebrew speaking child in modern history. According to Ben-Yehuda, this was a very important symbolic event for the future of the revival, because, with a child in the house, parents and visitors would have to speak naturally to him. The young boy would also be the living proof that an actual revitalization of a dead language is possible.
It was also interesting to see how consequently Eliezer Ben-Yehuda kept all foreign language influence from his home and his family. Any visitors had to talk to the boy in Hebrew, provided that they were able to do so. If not, the visitors were not allowed to see the child.
If a language which has stopped being spoken, with nothing remaining of it save what remains of our language – (if there is such a language) can return and be the spoken tongue of an individual for all necessities of his life, there is no room for doubt that it can become the spoken language of a community. (Ben-Yehuda 1908)
Ben-Yehuda wrote that in the introduction to his dictionary he published later.
Another interesting point is the practical use of the language. Since the young Ben-Zion Ben-Yehuda had to cope with ancient Hebrew prophecies but also with the real world, his father had to coin new words, mainly nouns for simple things like: doll, ice-cream, jelly, omelette, handkerchief, towel, bicycle, and hundreds more.
Jack Fellman furthermore explains that the use of “Hebrew in the School” was clearly the most important, and Ben-Yehuda realized this. He understood that the revival could succeed especially, and perhaps only, if the younger generation would begin to speak Hebrew freely. Therefore, when Nissim Bechar, the principal of the Torah and Avodah School of the Alliance Israélite Universelle School in Jerusalem proposed to Ben-Yehuda in 1882 that he should teach in his school, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda seized the chance. The important thing was not only to get an opportunity to teach Hebrew, but it was also the first occasion for children of different jewish communities to sit in one classroom and communicate through a medium they had in common: The Hebrew language.
The Hebrew language will go from the synagogue to the house of study, and from the house of study to the school, and from the school it will come into the home and... become a living language” (Ben-Yehuda, 1886).
As time went by many problems like a lack of teachers, teaching materials, guidelines and books emerged. A form of standardization was missing, and every teacher of Hebrew created useful words of his own to make teaching a little bit easier.
Ben-Yehuda also wanted to persuade the grown-up population by publishing his own Hebrew newspaper, called “Hahavatzelet”. Inspired by the layout and design of Paris’ “Le Figaro”, he wanted to create a newspaper, that contained information on every aspect of life as well as lists of vocabulary. Again, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda succeeded in his efforts and by the end of the 19th century virtually every male Jew in Palestine could read and understand a newspaper written in Hebrew.
He also, created a dictionary out of personal notes he took down during his time in Paris. The little Notebook he used contained vocabulary in Hebrew and French; notes he used to make remembering of certain words and phrases easier. While amending the dictionary to a broad audience, Ben-Yehuda encountered a problem, which might be very common in matters of language revival: As long as Ben-Yehuda spoke Hebrew at home or with his friends, he was able to use the language more or less as he wished. But if he wanted the entire society to use Hebrew, then the words would have to be precise and accurate, according to strict philological rules. Therefore, Ben-Yehuda became a scientific lexicographer. The results of enormous labours, working sometimes 18 hours a day, are astounding, culminating in his 17-volume “A Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew.” (cf Fellman, 2002).
To sum up, the revival of the Hebrew language was set under certain circumstances, which favoured a success. Firstly, people like Ben-Yehuda, who dedicate their whole life to a non-profit effort like this are certainly rare in the modern society. Of course, that does neither mean that people like him do not exist nowadays, nor that he revived Hebrew entirely on his own.
Secondly, it was the time of the beginning of the early immigration waves of Jewish settlers to Palestine. Most of these settlers were like Ben-Yehuda himself: young, educated and idealistic. This can be considered as the ideal agars for ideas like the one Ben-Yehuda had.
5. Bibliography
Secondary literature:
Crystal, David (2000), “Language Death”Cambridge”, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Schmidt, Annette (1990), “The Loss of Australia’s Aboriginal Language Heritage”, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press
Dixon, Robert M.W. (1989), “The Original languages of Australia” VOX vol. 3, 26-33
Johnson, Steve (1987), “The philosophy and politics of Aboriginal language maintenance.” Australian Aboriginal Studies, no.2, 54-58
Online resources:
Johnson, Stephen (1999) „Ex-Soviet republics rediscover nearly lost languages“, CNN-Online, [Online] [2003, June 29]
The Ethnologue.[Online]. [2003, July 3]
Fellman, Jack (2002). “Eliezer Ben-Yehudaand the Revival of Hebrew“. Jewish Virtual Library[Online] [2003, June 29]
Johnson, Stephen (1999) „Ex-Soviet republics rediscover nearly lost languages“, CNN-Online, [Online] [2003, June 29]
The Ethnologue.[Online]. [2003, July 3]
Fellman, Jack (2002). “Eliezer Ben-Yehudaand the Revival of Hebrew“. Jewish Virtual Library[Online] [2003, June 29]
Fellman, Jack (2002). “Eliezer Ben-Yehudaand the Revival of Hebrew“. Jewish Virtual Library [Online] [2003, June 29]
