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September-October, 2010: Worldwide media gives space to question of endangered languages
Uncovering the Koro language, India
One of the major events these past days for international media has been the discovery of a language in north-eastern India, a language which until then was totally unknown among language specialists. Koro, spoken by approximately 800 people, belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family, and is considered threatened with extinction as it is currently no longer being handed down to the younger generations.
The research team was led by Gregory Anderson of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, Oregon, and David Harrison, professor in linguistics at the Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.
For more info,
In French: Le Monde, October 5, 2010. Read
In English: The Time of India, October 6, 2010. Read
In Spanish: on elmundo.es, October 6, 2010. Read
How to save Arabic?
The French review Courrier International (#1037) has published a fascinating article entitled “How to save Arabic?” (Comment sauver la langue arabe ?). Surprising title – at first glance, Arabic seems nowhere near threatened: it is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, and the number of its speakers is constantly growing. Yet according to this article, Arabic is going through times of turmoil, and is experiencing great difficulty modernizing itself. The author, Walid Al-Kobeissi, Iraqi journalist and novelist who now lives in Norway, throws out a burning question: is this situation due to too much proximity with Islam and nationalism? A vast and fascinating debate (which those of you who read French have access to here) concluding on the issue in a nutshell: “Arabic has nearly 6,000 terms to refer to a camel. Who needs as many unused words to talk about camels?”
Romansh, Switzerland
The September 28 edition of the New York Times published an article on Romansh, a Romance language spoken in Switzerland. Romansh, still regarded as a patois just a few decades ago and eventually declared official language in 1996, is now spoken by approximately 60,000 people. Yet while speakers of Romansh are obviously very attached to their language, and despite public support to promote the language, Romansh is having a very hard time resisting the pressure of German or French, the two other official languages of Switzerland, considered economically more “useful”, along with Italian. Not to mention English, of course, in constant increase in a globalized Switzerland. Read