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