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Many languages are endangered
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When every known speaker of the language Amurdag gets together, there's still no one to talk to. Native Australian Charlie Mungulda is the only person alive known to speak that language, one of thousands around the world on the brink of extinction. From rural Australia to Siberia to Oklahoma, languages that embody the history and traditions of people are dying, researchers said Tuesday.
While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks, according to linguistic experts struggling to save at least some of them.
Five hotspots where languages are most endangered were listed Tuesday in a briefing by the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and the National Geographic Society.
In addition to northern Australia, eastern Siberia and Oklahoma and the U.S. Southwest, many native languages are endangered in South America — Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Bolivia — as well as the area including British Columbia, and the states of Washington and Oregon.
Losing languages means losing knowledge, says K. David Harrison, an assistant professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College.
"When we lose a language, we lose centuries of human thinking about time, seasons, sea creatures, reindeer, edible flowers, mathematics, landscapes, myths, music, the unknown and the everyday."
As many as half of the current languages have never been written down, he estimated.
That means, if the last speaker of many of these vanished tomorrow, the language would be lost because there is no dictionary, no literature, no text of any kind, he said.
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(Agencies) |
即便所有會(huì)說(shuō)Amurdag語(yǔ)的人聚在一起，也還是無(wú)人可交流。因?yàn)榘拇罄麃喭林用癫槔?穆尼古爾答是世界上唯一會(huì)說(shuō)這種語(yǔ)言的人。包括Amurdag語(yǔ)在內(nèi)的全世界幾千種語(yǔ)言正瀕臨消失。有關(guān)研究人員于周二稱(chēng)，從澳大利亞鄉(xiāng)村到西伯利亞，再到美國(guó)的俄克拉荷馬州，很多體現(xiàn)人類(lèi)歷史和傳統(tǒng)的語(yǔ)言正在消失。
據(jù)語(yǔ)言學(xué)家們介紹，目前世界上約有7000種語(yǔ)言正在使用，而每?jī)蓚€(gè)星期就有一種語(yǔ)言消失，語(yǔ)言學(xué)家們正在試圖挽救其中的一些語(yǔ)言。
周二，瀕危語(yǔ)言拯救研究所和國(guó)家地理學(xué)會(huì)在聯(lián)合發(fā)布的一份簡(jiǎn)報(bào)中公布了五大語(yǔ)言瀕危重點(diǎn)地區(qū)。
除澳大利亞北部、東西伯利亞、俄克拉荷馬州以及美國(guó)西南部地區(qū)外，厄瓜多爾、哥倫比亞、秘魯、巴西和玻利維亞等南美洲地區(qū)以及英屬哥倫比亞、華盛頓州和俄勒岡等地區(qū)的多種土著語(yǔ)言也瀕臨消失。
斯沃斯莫爾學(xué)院語(yǔ)言學(xué)副教授K?大衛(wèi)?哈里森說(shuō)，失去語(yǔ)言意味著失去知識(shí)。
“我們失去一種語(yǔ)言，就意味著失去了人類(lèi)好幾個(gè)世紀(jì)對(duì)于時(shí)間、季節(jié)、海洋生物、馴鹿、食用花卉、數(shù)學(xué)、風(fēng)景、神話、音樂(lè)、未知事物以及日常生活的思考成果?！?/font>
據(jù)他估計(jì)，目前世界上多達(dá)一半的語(yǔ)言沒(méi)有文字記錄。
這意味著，如果最后一個(gè)會(huì)說(shuō)這些語(yǔ)言的人明天消失了，這種語(yǔ)言也就消失了，因?yàn)檫@些語(yǔ)言沒(méi)有任何相關(guān)的字典、文獻(xiàn)和文本的記錄。
（英語(yǔ)點(diǎn)津姍姍編輯）
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