Language Revitalization

 Language revitalization is an important part of every culture because it represents the efforts that prevent the disappearance of a language. The expert in bilingualism, Colin Baker, says that “language revitalization is an attempt to counter the factors and trends that lead to the decline in the learning and use of a language.” Also, this revitalization can either be towards endangered or extinct languages. To know more about language endangerment, read our article on the topic.  

UNESCO’s Nine Factors affecting language revitalization 1.             Intergenerational language transmission 2.             Absolute number of speakers 3.             Proportion of speakers within the total population 4.             Shifts and domains of language use 5.             Response to new domains and media 6.             Availability of materials for language education and literacy 7.             Governmental and institutional language attitudes and policies, including official status and use 8.             Community member’s attitudes towards their own language 9.             Amount and quality of documentation Source: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/endangered-languages/faq-on-endangered-languages/

Colin Baker also refers to language revitalization as, “a conscious effort to change ideas, values, attitudes, and behaviors”. In fact, Colin Baker mentions the four pillars of language revitalization which are:

1.             Language policy and socio-legal developments

2.             Formal education

3.             The family

4.             Community life

Credits: Ewan Watt

Because of this, it can be inferred that language revitalization depends entirely on people's efforts, mostly on the community and the government’s disposition. One example of community efforts towards language reclamation is the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project. 

The Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project understands that it is the birth right of each Wampanoag child and adult to speak her or his Language given by Creator. The project successes to date are:  ·            The only inter-tribal cooperative project for the tribes of the Wampanoag ·            The credentialed training of two Wampanoag linguists ·            Over fifteen certified language teachers ·            The development of a dictionary that currently holds over 11,000 words ·            The development of curriculum for second language acquisition of adult learners ·            The development of a no English curriculum for all ages ·            Immersion camp curriculum for all ages ·            3-Week Summer Youth ‘Turtle’ Program for youth ages 5 – 13 ·            Community language classes held in Mashpee, Aquinnah, Plymouth, New Bedford and Boston  The first American Indian language to reclaim a Language with no living speakers. There is a young child now being raised with Wampanoag as a first language. She is the first Native speaker of the language since the mid 19th century.  Source: http://www.wlrp.org/project-history.html

Digital Language Revitalization

Students work on the development of Duolingo's Navajo language course at San Juan High School on October 1, 2018 in Blanding, Utah. Educators and students helped create lessons that the startup launched on Oct. 8.

Credits: Justin Merriman

 Digital tools are especially mentioned as one promising aid for language revitalization because there are many websites about that topic that can be seen by people around the world.  However, Collin Baker cites four concerns about digital language revitalization:

1.             Informed consent is not always possible

2.             Intellectual property rights

3.             Digital divide – which means that not everyone has access or knowledge about those technological resources­

4.             Forms or writing – mostly referred about the generational gap that leads to different forms of expression  

Even so, Baker adds that there have been many successful initiatives to establish a digital presence for endangered languages. Therefore, these concerns are not an impediment for using technological resources in language revitalization programs. For nine examples of apps created for endangered languages click here.

Language Revitalization Around the World

                Sarah Shulist considers language loss, reclamation, and revitalization as “significant themes of contemporary linguistic and linguistic anthropological engagement with minority and indigenous people”. In her work, Shulist mentions some ethnographic cases as examples of language revitalization situations in the Americas focusing primary on indigenous communities in the United States, Guatemala, and Brazil. She divides the discussion into two perspectives:

1.              Identity, community, public

2.             The politics of endangerment and endangered language communities

One conclusion of Shulist’s work is that different contexts of revitalization include different terms, conditions, identity, and integration. However, no matter the differences, “ideologies of identity cannot be disconnected from the economic and political that are a vital part for revitalization” (Shulist, 2016). 

How to help to revitalize a language?

Source: https://www.languageconservancy.org/programs/indigenous-language-program-support/

Language Revitalization in México

In Mexico, there are many indigenous languages, and some of them need to be revitalized. Fortunately, there are efforts on the part of the government to promote the use of these languages such as the creation of the Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (INALI). This institution is in charge to promote multiculturalism and multilingual environments in the country by providing information, creating educational programs, and developing material. Nevertheless, there are many changes to do if the main objective is to promote a multilingual environment because, as it was said, language revitalization depends on the disposition and efforts of people who are involved. One obstacle is the conception that learning English is seen as more useful, a conception reinforced by the promotion of the Programa Nacional de Inglés (PRONI) over the programs that exist about the revitalization of indigenous languages. However, PRONI and indigenous language programs are sometimes perceived as something with an extra value, so the resources and the importance of both programs are minimized by the government and even the people. That does not mean that the efforts are useless, because the only way to change this situation is to keep promoting and developing programs to show the relevance of learning different languages whether they are national or foreign.

Revitalization of indigenous languages in Nayarit

As you can see, language revitalization requires many efforts from the community and governments to promote the use of minority languages and an environment free of discrimination. Other ideal they share is that language revitalization is important for every society, since the loss of a language implies the loss of a culture and identity; many researchers and institutions have seen that, and it is the reason for the developments of different educational programs around the world. 

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References

 Baker, C. (2017). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism, 6^th Ed. Clevedon, UK:Multilingual Matters.

Lagos, Cristián. Revitalizacion linguistica del mapudungun en entornos urbanos y no urbanos en Chile: el impacto del Programa de Educacion Intercultural Bilingue (PEIB)." Lenguas Modernas, no. 41, 2013, p. 67+. Informe Académico, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A365071405/IFME?u=pu&sid=IFME&xid=12abed96. Accessed 29 Nov. 2018.

Shulist, S. (2016). Language revitalization and the future of ethnolinguistic identity. 47th ed. [ebook] Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0271530915000956?via%3Dihub [Accessed 29 Nov. 2018].

Language Endangerment and Bilingual Education

Mexico is a country with a rich language diversity. Although most of its population speaks Spanish, there are lots of foreign and indigenous languages coexisting all over the country. However, there is one problem: Many of these indigenous languages are currently endangered or likely to be in the not so far future. The following map shows the current situation of languages in Mexico:

To explore the map of the entire world, click here.

Why is language endangerment important?
As author Colin Baker puts it, when a language dies, “it is like an encyclopedia formed from that language and culture being buried.” Languages are attached to culture, knowledge, and a unique vision of the world. Therefore, their lost is a lost for humanity itself. Because of this, efforts are made to promote language maintenance — that the communities who speak endangered languages keep speaking them — and language revitalization — teaching the language to increase its number of speakers. Check out the following video about why endangered languages matter:

Why is language endangerment relevant now?
According to author Robert M.W. Dixon, in the past, many languages also died due to various causes, such as environmental phenomena, migration, imperialism, etc. Yet, there was always an equilibrium: Some languages died, but others were born. Nowadays, however, the rate of language extinction has dramatically increased. In fact, according to author Sarah G. Thomason, it is expected that by 2100, half of the world’s existing languages will have died. This situation might be provoked mainly by changes in socioeconomic status worldwide, as well as by attitudes of discrimination and devaluation towards small language communities in society while other languages become more and more popular.  To learn more about endangered languages around the world, visit UNESCO’s FAQ on the topic.

The role of bilingual education

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An interesting fact about the phenomenon of language endangerment is that bilingual education, or the lack thereof, seems to play an important role both as a way to prevent it and as a cause for it. According to researchers Juan Héctor Painequeo Paillán and Elizabeth J. Quintrileo Llancao, the indigenous Mapuche language in Chile is being replaced by Spanish because schools serve as immersion programs for Spanish language learning instead of promoting the maintenance of language minorities. Besides, staff and classmates have negative attitudes towards Mapuche students because of their limitations when speaking Spanish, and the use of Mapuche at school was sanctioned in the past. They believe that, if schools took Mapuche into consideration, this would encourage Mapuche students to maintain it, and Hispanic students would take interest in the language and respect it. Nevertheless, Mapuche students and teachers oppose the teaching of Mapuche at school; Mapuche students do so because they think it reduces their life opportunities and isolates them, and teachers because of the insufficient training and support they receive.
Meanwhile, researchers Chrisantha Fernando and colleagues propose that, in communities where two languages are spoken, the speakers of the majority language learn the minority language at school so that they can coexist without one or the other being at risk. This is inspired by the case of Irish, whose learning mostly occurs at school rather than by transmission among family members. However, introducing a language to school requires corpus planning, which among other procedures, involves the creation of a writing system for languages without literacy. It must be taken into account, though, that for some indigenous groups, such as the Mapuche community, this means risking their heritage.

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On the other hand, there are those who oppose the “imposition” of language maintenance and revitalization, like author Abram de Swaan. He argues that people are entitled to abandon their language if it oppresses them and/or they think another one can give them better opportunities, like the Mapuche students who oppose the teaching of their language at school. Besides, he argues that some policies to prevent language endangerment promote the expansion of majority languages, especially English. First, if you force majority language speakers to learn a minority language they don’t need, they will have negative attitudes towards the language. Then, in a very multilingual context, people will logically want to speak English to communicate with as much people as possible.

What can we do about indigenous languages in Mexico?
Although Swaan makes some interesting points regarding the imposition of language maintenance, it must not be forgotten that a communities' rejection of their own language may also be related to discrimination issues. Therefore, while it might be inconvenient to impose the learning of the language to all students, those who wish to learn it or use it should have the opportunity to do so, native speakers should receive support to succeed at school and in learning the majority language at the same time, and respect towards all languages and communities should be promoted at schools.

To learn more about the topic of language revitalization, read our article about it. To access resources on language endangerment, maintenance, and revitalization, visit The Endangered Languages Project. To take a peek at linguists' work with endangered languages, check out this National Geographic clip about The Enduring Voices Project:

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References

Baker, C. (2017). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism, 6th Ed. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Fernando, C., Valijärvi, R., & Goldstein, R. A. (2010). A Model of the Mechanisms of Language Extinction and Revitalization Strategies to Save Endangered Languages. Human Biology, 82(1), 47-75. doi:10.3378/027.082.0104

Painequeo Paillán, J. H., & Quintrileo Llancao, E. J. (2015). Algunas causas que podrían estar incidiendo en el eventual debilitamiento de la vitalidad y posible desplazamiento de la lengua mapuche por el castellano en Chile. Onomázein Revista De Lingüística, Filología Y Traducción, (31), 205-2018. doi:10.7764/onomazein.31.14

Swaan, A. D. (2004). Endangered languages, sociolinguistics, and linguistic sentimentalism. European Review, 12(4), 567-580. doi:10.1017/s1062798704000481