Saving Extinct Languages
Sometimes you read a news story that makes you proud to be human. Today's story, Saving Extinct Languages is one of those. It describes the work of John Peabody Harrington, who
spent four decades gathering more than 1 million pages of phonetic notations on disappearing languages spoken by tribes from Alaska to South America. When the technology became available, he supplemented his written record with audio recordings - first using wax cylinders, then aluminum discs.
The story makes clear the quiet dedication of Harrington, who died in 1961. His archive contains his old field clothes, pockets still containing "the buns and crackers Harrington kept in his pockets so he wouldn't have to waste time looking for meals." His letters to his assistant confirm this sense of urgency: "Rain or no rain, rush. Dying languages depend on you."
It's amazing to learn of the linguistic diversity California once housed. The archive contains records of more than 100 California languages alone. And it's moving to learn how much these notes and recordings mean to today's native Americans, a thread tying them to their lost past:
The first time Jose Freeman heard his tribe's lost language through the crackle of a 70-year-old recording, he cried."My ancestors were speaking to me," said Freeman of the sounds captured when American Indians still inhabited California's Salinas Valley. "It was like coming home."
...the last native speaker of Salinan died almost half a century ago...
It's wonderful that this work is now being rediscovered by scholars and native Americans. It's a testament to the difference that one person with a passion can make to the lives of others, even fifty years after his death. And it's a reminder to all of us to work on stuff that matters, regardless of contemporary success or the lack thereof.
(Sidenote on the link above. This is actually an AP story that ran in my local paper, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, but I linked to it in the Vacaville Times because that's the only one that shows up so far in Google. I wonder why the Vacaville Times is indexed better than the AP feed itself.)
tags:
| comments: 8
| Sphere It
submit: 
0 TrackBacks
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blogs.oreilly.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/6301
Comments: 8
Actually Tim, as an expat living in Russia I would suggest that one of the single biggest causes of disagreement and human suffering is the lack of "standardization" of languages.
As a technologist you certainly understand how difficult it is to communicate when everyone is using a different type of system. Human communication is no different.
I would like to see an renewed effort for the leading nations of the world to work towards the creation of a standardized language. Much in the same way that peoples in some Scandanavian countries speak their native tongue locally but learn English as a tool to communicate outside their borders.
Can you imagine the viral growth of many Web 2.0 properties if the potential market were the whole world not just the English speaking portion of it.
Google translate is an excellent intermediate step. I would, however, like to see Google incorporate Google Translate directly into Google Reader. That would not only be a very popular and efficient method of reading RSS feeds from languages you don't understand but it would greatly improve human understanding of each other and therefore, make this world a better place.
Yes, the linguistic diversity of the Americas was quite deep. Some estimate that there were 2000 languages in North America alone prior to colonization. The reason California had such diversity is because it could support large populations based on its resources, go next door to the Great Basin and you find just a couple.
Timothy --
I don't disagree that there are benefits to a common language. But surely you see the benefits of diversity as well, and more than that, the strength that comes from a unique heritage. We don't mix the gene pool for nothing! We all know what happens when families or cultures become inbred.
And celebrating lost languages is entirely different from arguing that we all ought to have our own, and not be able to speak to each other.
Having only one language is like having Britney Spears be the only music.
We preserve ancient potsherds, studying them for a glimpse into the past. How much more should we preserve ancient languages?
(On a personal note, I don't think I would have succeeded in my initial career as a technical writer without my Greek and Latin. The process of learning them helped me a lot with pattern recognition.)
Sure, from an intellectual exercise point of view I do see the benefits of language diversity.
As someone in the process of learning a "foreign" language I do understand that languages are both a means of communication and in some instances a prism through which a culture sees the world around them and therefore, catalysts for unique cultural traits.
However, I would argue that diversity of languages amongst cohabitational peoples creates more actual real life problems than it offer benefits through its influence on a particular society's culture.
The critical point in my argument is that language is more a means of communication than an end unto itself. Therefore, your Britney Spears comparison may miss the mark.
I acutally think that were creative people around the world to speak the same language (i.e communicate without "friction") then the blossoming of "culture" would be far greater than it is today.
Cultural diversity is separate from language diversity.
However, war is often directly correlated with human misunderstanding of one another which then escalates beyond control. A single "International Language" would greatly reduce future misunderstanding and therefore, make the world a better place to live. Truly.
(I, too, studied Latin and enjoyed it tremendously)
"But surely you see the benefits of diversity as well, and more than that, the strength that comes from a unique heritage. We don't mix the gene pool for nothing!"
Different genetic traits demonstrably lead to different survival benefits. But the only difference in benefits in natural languages seem to be related to vocabulary size, community, and difficulty learning/teaching the language, and languages with small communities are at a disadvantage there.
'speak the same language (i.e communicate without "friction")'
me thinks the divorce rate and civil wars indicate there is more to the puzzle than simply a common tongue ;)
I think that you, the technologists that build the digital world, should keep in mind this diversity and give us the tools that allow us to use the internet in every single language. For example, I still often have problems with Unicode. Another example is the iPhone I bought here in France. With it, I cannot write messages in Catalan, Spanish or Esperanto, three languages that I use everyday, because it lacks the necessary dictionaries (without a dictionary the on-screen keyboard is useless). Even, I cannot deactivate them, so when I write in Catalan it keeps correcting me.
Post A Comment:
STAY CONNECTED
RECENT COMMENTS
- pqs on Saving Extinct Languages: I think that you, the t...
- siri dhyan Singh on Saving Extinct Languages: 'speak the same languag...
- Tom on Saving Extinct Languages: "But surely you see the...
- Timothy Post on Saving Extinct Languages: Sure, from an intellect...
- Tim O'Reilly on Saving Extinct Languages: Timothy -- I don't dis...
- Native American researcher on Saving Extinct Languages: Yes, the linguistic div...
- Timothy Post on Saving Extinct Languages: Actually Tim, as an exp...
- Sean Young on Saving Extinct Languages: Great article. I am a l...
RADAR TOPICS
Sean Young [02.17.08 04:16 PM]
Great article. I am a language teacher and have been archiving what I can about languages - living, endangered and extinct. It's great to see this work being done. If there's anything I can do to help, contact me.