Classification
of languages according to the level of their extinction risk
After
being accepted to English philology faculty of the University, in addition to
learning one more language, I deepened my understanding of language classification,
general history of languages and sad fate of some beautiful but almost lost
languages. And that is going to be the main topic of this article, which I hope
you find interesting.
Nowadays
there are more than 5000 different languages in the world, including dialects
and various local forms of communication and only 10% of them possess their own
writing – rest is verbal.
Some
of these languages are widespread, some are so rear that got almost extinct. And
in era of globalization, while boarders are getting more and more transparent
and as humanity slowly but inevitably is becoming a one big family, the risk of
complete extinction of one languages and diffusion and dominance of others is just
a matter of time. According to UN prediction by the end of upcoming century
world will lose about 90% of currently available languages, with cultural and
scientific heritage they carry.
Even
today we can see that top 25 languages of the world are being spoken by almost
5 bln. people out of 6 bln. population of our planet. And top 5 languages
(Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish and Russian) are spoken by 2,5-3 bln. people,
with steady growth of this figures.
The
only period in modern history when number of flourishing languages increased
was beginning of 90th. The collapse of USSR led to independence in
many of countries, thus leading to rise of national heritage, culture and
language. For example from 1924 till 1991 number of Russian speaking population
was constantly growing in Republic of Uzbekistan, getting close to 80% by the
end of 80th, while native language was slowly declining. But since
1991 to nowadays languages situation changed to opposite, making Uzbek language
dominant all over the country. The same is observed in almost all post-Soviet
countries.
From
one side, it is good that globalization stimulated a lot of people all around
the world to learn foreign languages, but on the other hand, it leads to slow
death of their own languages and literature. That’s why many countries of the
world are making great efforts to support their native languages and heritage
they gained during the years and centuries of language formation. I will
describe some more actions performed by world society to save language variety
below.
From
abovementioned information we can understand that a problem exists, a problem
of overwhelming domination of some languages and inevitable extinction of
others in future. In fact to have a clear picture of such a future and its
consequences we must gaze a little deeper in to classification of languages and
their social status.
Social ranks of languages
depend primarily on:
- communicative
distribution of the language (prevalence and diversity of usage of the language);
- presence of written
language and length of its history;
- level of
standardization of the language (availability of rules and strict norms for
language forms);
- legal status of the
language (national, official, constitutional and etc.);
- confessional status of
the language (level of fulfillment of specific group or nation’s confessional
purposes ) and
- target status of the
language (reasons why a language is being used: as a subject, as a language of
education, as a foreign language and etc.)
Communicative status of
the language is one of the most important
characteristics for the survival of the language (though all of the
abovementioned points are very important, this one plays the role of some sort
of nutrient for feeding the growth of other ones). This status includes not
only communication done among population verbally, but also all sorts of
reading and listening communication like TV, newspapers, radio, internet and
etc.
Leaders
in this sphere are English (spoken in 47 countries worldwide), French (26),
Arab (21), Spanish (20) and Portuguese (7).
According to
communicative rank in linguistics, languages are subdivided into:
-World languages – six
basic languages accepted by UN as the languages of official international and
inter-social communication. These are English, Arab, Spanish, Chinese, French
and Russian. This group of languages is not permanent, for instance two centuries
ago leading role was held by French, now substituted by English, and before
French - Portuguese was dominating. In ancient times Latin language was in lead
and now it is extinct however. So the members of World languages category are
replaceable.
-International languages
– these languages are less widespread than the previous group but are used for
communication between several countries or ethnical groups of population.
Usually such languages are accepted as official languages in several countries.
Examples are Portuguese and Suahili (in Africa).
-State (national)
languages – legally approved as an official language of communication in at
least one country, this group of languages is present in almost every country
of the world. Examples are Uzbek, Japanese, German. Also some countries have
several State languages.
-Regional languages –
being non-official, these languages usually have written form and are employed
for communication in some groups of people within one country. Examples are
Tibetan language in Tibet, Chjuan language in China, or Igbo language in
Nigeria.
-Local languages –
usually only verbal this group constitutes the biggest part of language
variety. There are thousands of such languages in the world. And dialect of
Tajik language spoken in Uzbekistan, which I mentioned in the beginning of my
article, is one of the examples for local language. Vast majority of local
languages is practiced in China and African countries, where one country may
have hundreds of local languages, and two villages located 20 kilometers from
each other can hardly understand each other’s speech.
Written language
is another important point in language diffusion. Creation of written language
was one of the most important factors for thrilling development of humanity.
And as history shows, tribes or countries with written language always were a
step forward in comparison to their verbal-only neighbors. According to UN
statistics, written language usually was a next step after increased
communicative status of the language. Thus, only developed languages were able
to stimulate the society for creation of written language and calligraphy.
But
it must be noticed that availability of written language is not a guaranty for
language survival after all. Suffices to mention Latin and Ancient Egyptian
languages.
Standardization of the
language is the upcoming step in language development after
creation of written form of it. It means that, after creation of written
language developed societies tend to set rules for its application in order to
prevent it from mess and unify it as much as possible. Usually, languages with
highest level of standardization have high achievements in literature and
humanitarian sciences. But specialists still didn’t arrive to a consensus which
was the primary factor: whether development of literature led to a high level
of language standardization of vice-versa.
Legal status of the
language – unlike previous characteristics, this one is
completely artificial. Previous points were mostly chaotic and uncontrolled,
happening during a long period of time and mostly independent of one single
human beings will. Legal status, however, is a conscious, language related
decision made in a specific period of time. This point helps to fix usage of
the language in a particular territory, so a little helping to protect it from
extinction and to keep the cultural heritage gained the language.
There
are many different types of legal statuses for languages. Some examples are:
State language, Official language, National language, Temporary State language,
Official state language, Local language, Autonomous republic language and etc.
The main point is that this status should be clearly determined in official
documents of the country (usually in Constitution). State language in Republic
of Uzbekistan, for instance, is Uzbek language, while Republic of Singapore
declared Malayan, Tamilan, Chinese and English as State languages, mentioning
them all in their Constitution.
Confessional Status of
the language – to understand this characteristic and
its importance we must go a little back into history. Some languages in past were
original languages for creation of Religious writings. Such languages are
called Prophetical languages. Among them we can mention Arab language, ancient
Jewish language, Sanskrit, Ven-yan language and etc. All of them were used to
create original Religious writing. Later this writings were mostly translated
to different languages for better understanding in other countries. So the
Confessional status of the language indicates its ability to fulfill needs of
the population in their Religious views, ability to explain and describe points
stipulated in Holy writing.
Target Status of the
language is the role the language plays in society. There are
three different target statuses according to the linguistic classification:
1- language
is used as an supplementary element for learning something. As mentioned
before, overwhelming majority of languages in the world are verbal-only local
languages, so mostly they are being used in primary education process to teach
basics and to prepare students or pupils for the next level, where they will be
able to communicate and learn on other, more sophisticated and
“writing-possessing” language (usually next level is conducted on official
language)
2- language
is used as basic language of education. In some countries there are several
basic languages, and sometimes one language is used for primary and secondary
education and another (usually with a higher communicative rank) is used for
higher and professional education; in this case first language is endangered.
3- language
is a subject of study. In this point it is important to specify where the
language is being taught (in a country were that language is native, or in a
foreign country) and what is the purpose of such learning. Here are some
possible specifications:
a.
language
is native for the students and as well it is the language of teaching. In this
case the target is to advance the knowledge.
b.
language
is native for the students, but the language of teaching is different (usually
with a higher communicative rank). In this case target is to advance native
language, while not the language of education.
c.
language
is not native for students and teachers, but is spoken within the society
dwelled. Target is to ease inter-social communication.
d.
language
is taught as a “foreign language” for general purposes.
e.
language
is a “Classical language” for specific territory. Usually it’s regional
language or historically accepted form of it within some area.
f.
language
is taught as a special subject. This usually concerns to special institutions
targeted to train professional teachers, interpreters, linguists and etc. One
of the examples is the University of World languages in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
So
from all abovementioned we can conclude that life of a language depends on wide
variety of social ranks, which are complex and deeply interconnected. But we
can observe in history that sometimes even languages with strong positions in
all mentioned points can get extinct. As happened with Latin language. And the
bright side is that sometimes extinct languages can revive and become popular.
As happened with Hebrew.
At
the conclusion I’d like to note that the problem of language extinction is not
a new subject, and linguists all over the world are concerned with it. There is
no need to explain that formation of language takes many centuries and during
this time language inherits a lot of information about culture, traditions,
habits and etc. of the nation it belongs to. This information, in form of
language is irreplaceable if the language is lost. Considering that, it was a
correct and timely decision to create International Linguistic Congress, which
with a support of UN has been acting for decades and helping to save endangered
languages.
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