Languages

Languages

   Sundays are a quiet day, a day typically reserved for traditional events such as attending a church or opening the Sunday paper or making a weekend breakfast or a day with family.  Sunday is also a day of relaxation, something already evident to my cat as he waits patiently for yet another series of strokes.  The gap in writing this all the more apparent at who won out.

   It was thus that I found my self immersed in An Uncommon History of Common Courtesy, written a few years ago and filled with tidbits of traditions, from where "keep the change" originated to how bowing before a woman and tipping one's hat became a common piece of etiquette.  But what was even more interesting to me was the table of language usage borrowed from SIL International (SIL deals exclusively in studying language usage and language history, the typical SIL employee spending 10 to 20 years in the field studying a specific language).

   Dominating the numbers (the figures are from 2013) was Mandarin (again) with nearly triple the usage of the next language, Spanish.  Then came English and, falling a notch from #4 to #5, Arabic (used in 57 countries...however I must admit that on watching the film, Bethlehem, I found it difficult to distinguish between Arabic and Hebrew as the subtitles suggested).  What surprised me, however, was the language with more users than Arabic...so, here we go again:  German (no, #12), French (no, #14), Italian (no, #21), Japanese (no, but above German at #9 and just below Russian at #8).

   The language that took over the #4 spot with nearly 25 million more users than Arabic was Hindi, the primary country of the language being India.  As it turns out, India's other languages of Telugu, Marathi, Panjabi and Tamil hold an additional 4 of the top 20 spots.  Bengali (Bangladesh) came in #6  and Portugese #7, both of them still having more users than French or German.  Also beating out both French and German were the languages Javanese (Indonesia) and Lahnda (from Pakistan)...on a side note, the Urdu language, also from Pakistan, has nearly 64 million active users (Mandarin on the other hand, used in 33 countries, now has well over a billion users).

   There are still over 7,100 languages in the world, in addition to alternative languages such as sign language.  And this doesn't count the number of languages that have since vanished from our history.  In one instance in Papua New Guinea alone, there were found records of 830 languages, some of which have disappeared or are heading that direction, primarily from a shift to a more recognized language.  According to one report by SIL, "Our finding is that at one extreme more than 75% of the languages that were in use in 1950 are now extinct or moribund in Australia, Canada, and the United States, but at the other extreme less than 10% of languages are extinct or moribund in sub-Saharan Africa. Overall we find that 19% of the world’s living languages are no longer being learned by children."  Some researchers think these changes occur first in the home, then move to special events, then religious services, then finally business and transactions with other groups. 

    But step back.  Imagine first the urge to create a new language.  You can't communicate with another person or group so you both decide on a common word for something, say, a rock.  Then another word, and another.  Then when enough of a vocabulary is there, you find grammar coming...verbs and adjectives, all new words added to your descriptions of objects you've noted.  Then past tense, future tense, all the imperfects and imperatives...then teaching it to others, your children or relatives, then the rest of the town or village.  Then to develop a way to write it all down (don't ask how many forms of writing fonts and styles there are).  Then to find out that your "new" language is now being used by millions!

   Of course, I'm simplified things to the extreme, jumping over generations and generations to try and understand how on earth we came to have so many distinct languages, at least distinct enough to be classified as a language and not simply a dialect...over 7,100.  And to think that a language such as Latin, once so strong and the foundation of many of today's language variations, can basically disappear (enough to be considered "dead" by many linguists).  There's a consequence to this, that of one language "dying" every two weeks...will the pace accelerate?  Some predictions are that over 7,000 of those 7,100 languages will be gone by the end of the century.  And with them, what else vanishes?
 
   All of which brings me full circle to the book I'm browsing, where author Bethanne Patrick quotes the words of Benjamin Franklin describing how some of the Native Americans he met used language:  The old men sit in the foremost ranks, the warriors in the next, and the women and children in the hindmost.  The business of the women is to take exact notice of what passes, imprint it in their memories (for they have no writing), and communicate it to their children.  They are the records of the council, and they preserve the tradition of the stipulations in treaties a hundred years back; which, when we compare with our writings, we always find exact.  He that would speak rises.  The rest observe a profound silence.  When he has finished and sits down, they leave him for five or six minutes to recollect that if he has omitted anything he intended to say or has anything to add he may rise again and deliver it.  To interrupt another, even in common conversation, is reckoned highly indecent.  

   In all of our years, all of our languages, it seems that the need to talk only accompanies the need to listen.  There is a reason each language took its time to develop, finding that there was a need to say something else, something another language couldn't describe to their satisfaction, to be unique, to relate to enough people that it would be adopted.  The fact that we are watching those languages fade before our eyes might be our canary in a coal mine...what's leaving us and why don't we care?  As author James Michener said, "If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home."

   E.T., are you listening?  Are we?