November
2009
Who’s Protecting the World’s Endangered Languages (All 7000)? These Guys
When an insect only seven people have ever seen goes extinct in a place you need a government grant to get to, more than just environmentalists feel a part of our world has gone forever. Understandably so. But what about when a language once used by thousands is down to its last speaker, and the universe of relations and ideas that language conveys will not survive them? Who protests, who runs worldwide campaigns or passes legislation against hazardous, toxic notions like “official languages” and “world languages” that creep onto and kill ways of understanding what it means to be human? A group of fifty linguists meeting at the first-ever Endangered Languages Information and Infrastructure Workshop, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, realize the tragedy but aren’t superheroes…
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Concerning the campaign to save endangered and dying languages, can I point to the contribution, made by the World Esperanto Association, to UNESCO’s campaign.
The commitment was made, by the World Esperanto Association at the United Nations’ Geneva HQ in September. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eR7vD9kChBA&feature=related
Your readers may be interested in http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU Professor Piron was a translator with the United Nations in Geneva.
A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net
Thank you Brian. But how and to what extent is (or is not) Esperanto’s aspiration to be a “world language” or “universal language” counter to the very idea of protecting endangered languages, and multilingualism in particular?