Language is the mirror of tradition, culture and a medium of spontaneous expression of feeling, thought & imagination. Of late but not too much delay people have started activities to preserve & protect the languages which are on the verge of extinction. It is really alarming that many indigenous communicating mediums are being fading out. But the recent “ Enduring Voice Project” (EVP) lead the light of actinic hope.
The linguistics identified five global hot spots where the problem is worst led by Northern Australia & some region of South America. They suggested to document & revitalize languages slipping towards oblivion, which is spoken by indigenous people. The project coordinator David Harrison, a professor of Pennsylvanian indicates that there are 6,992 recognized languages all over the world but an average at least one language is vanishing every two weeks. The project backed by National Geographic Magazine is currently studying the region of Northern Australia, Queensland, Northern territory & Western Australia as the language spoken here are vulnerable to extinction.
Apart from that the project is aiming for the conservation of language of region of Central South America covering Equador, Columbia, Peru, Brazil & Bolivia where the indigenous languages overpowered by Spanish, Portuguese & other languages. Also some languages of region of North America, British Columbia in Canada, Oregon, Oklahoma, Texas & New Mexico seem to be endangered.
The problem being that there are only few speakers of some language without fluency having a passive knowledge of the language. Many languages have no written form, meanings that they are lost forever when their last speaker dies. Over the years some languages have been deliberately terminated by colonizer, aggressors taking over the territory and waged genocide.
According to linguistic Gregory Anderson, languages often tickle out of existence rather than sort of disappearance. Many a times children decide the fate of the language by abandoning an ancestral tongue for another language, say the example of supremacy of English language over other languages. Fine, the EVP is doing a lot for Australia, America, Mexico etc, but the situation in India is no more pleasing. Take the burning example of Arunachal Pradesh where lot of languages are spoken without dialect need for retrospection.
The Arunachal Institute of Tribal Studies (AITS) of Rajiv Gandhi Central University is praiseworthy for their effort of developing script for some indigenous languages. Recent workshop on lexicography under the leadership of Pro Vice-Chancellor Prof. T. Mibang has given a clear indication that AITS is keen in promoting the local languages. But we have to do a lot more in the prospect of Indian context, otherwise we are going to lose an immense store house of knowledge, valuable information accumulate over centuries about various living species exist in language of native people.
Wednesday, December 25, 2024