Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages

Christopher Moseley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781135796402
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The concern for the fast-disappearing language stocks of the world has arisen particularly in the past decade, as a result of the impact of globalization. This book appears as an answer to a felt need: to catalogue and describe those languages, making up the vast majority of the world's six thousand or more distinct tongues, which are in danger of disappearing within the next few decades.

Endangerment is a complex issue, and the reasons why so many of the world's smaller, less empowered languages are not being passed on to future generations today are discussed in the book's introduction. The introduction is followed by regional sections, each authored by a notable specialist, combining to provide a comprehensive listing of every language which, by the criteria of endangerment set out in the introduction, is likely to disappear within the next few decades. These languages make up ninety per cent of the world's remaining language stocks.

Each regional section comprises an introduction that deals with problems of language preservation peculiar to the area, surveys of known extinct languages, and problems of classification. The introduction is followed by a list of all known languages within the region, endangered or not, arranged by genetic affiliation, with endangered and extinct languages marked. This listing is followed by entries in alphabetical order covering each language listed as endangered. Useful maps are provided to pinpoint the more complex clusters of smaller languages in every region of the world.

The Encyclopedia therefore provides in a single resource: expert analysis of the current language policy situation in every multilingual country and on every continent, detailed descriptions of little-known languages from all over the world, and clear alphabetical entries, region by region, of all the world's languages currently thought to be in danger of extinction.

The Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages will be a necessary addition to all academic linguistics collections and will be a useful resource for a range of readers with an interest in development studies, cultural heritage and international affairs.

1

North America

Victor Golla

Introduction

The languages treated in this chapter are the indigenous languages of North America, defined as the territory of the United States and Canada, the immediately adjacent areas of northern Mexico (including Baja California), and Greenland. Although some of these languages are more immediately threatened than others, only a handful are spoken by more than 10,000 people and all must be considered endangered in the long term.

Origins

Even taking into account recent archaeological discoveries in South America, incon-trovertible evidence of human activity in the western hemisphere can be dated no earlier than 12,500 years before the present (Dillehay 2000). This indicates that the Americas were the last major land mass to be reached by our species after its expan-sion from Africa about 100,000 years ago, contrasting with a date of at least 40,000 BP for the human settlement of Australia. However, American Indian languages show considerably greater diversity in their grammars and vocabularies than the indigenous languages of Australia, and some have argued that 12,500 years is too short a time to have produced so many distinct language families exhibiting such deep-seated typolo-gical differences (Nichols 1990).

The current state of our knowledge of American prehistory does not allow a reso-lution of this question. It seems clear, however, that part of the reason for the diversity of the languages of the Americas generally, and of North America specifically, lies in the long-term operation of social processes that promote a multitude of small lin-guistic communities. While precise figures are impossible to determine, it is likely that at the time of European contact the average number of speakers of a North American language was only a few thousand. During the historical period only a handful of North American languages were spoken by groups significantly larger than this, and most of these appear to have been the result of post-contact cultural changes (the spread of Cree and Ojibwe was largely due to the fur trade, while the Cherokee and Navajo nations are political artifacts of the eighteenth and nineteenth century). Tra-ditional alliances such as the League of the Iroquois or the Creek Confederacy were typically multilingual, and even trade languages or lingua francas were rare and lar-gely post-contact. In California and Oregon, where the tendency to local identity was amplified by a complex geography and ecology, some language communities appear to have numbered only a few hundred speakers. Even where trade and intermarriage were common, adjoining tribes usually had clear linguistic boundaries and multilingualism was frequent.

Survival

The social forces that have generated a multitude of small, distinct language commu-nities appear also to have promoted their survival for many generations after the European penetration and domination of the continent. Until recent decades, the number of North American languages that continued to be spoken was remarkably high, despite remarkably small numbers of speakers. In the classification adopted here, 312 distinct indigenous languages are recognized as having been been spoken during the past 500 years in North America. Of these, only sixty-five became extinct, or were last documented, before about 1930. Most of these were spoken in the areas along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico where Europeans almost totally displaced indigenous populations.

The rate of attrition has accelerated considerably during the last seventy years. Of the 247 languages that survived past 1930, a little under one fourth (fifty-eight) have already ceased to be spoken as first languages, a loss of about nine languages per decade, and more will follow soon. This sudden decline is an index of the economic and political integration of indigenous people into the general North American population and their absorption into general North American political and economic culture. Since the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, native identity in the United States has largely been defined through federally recognized tribal govern-ments which, although unique to American Indians, are thoroughly Euro-American in their underlying values and modes of operation. A similar transformation took place in Canada, although somewhat later and at a slower pace. This was followed by the incorporation of many reservation communities into the national economies of the US and Canada in the postwar years. The consequent peripheralization of tradi-tional cultural activities led to the replacement of native languages by English (or French in parts of Canada) as the general code of community interaction, further encouraged by the growth of satellite television and the internet in the 1980s and 1990s.

However, despite the loss of speakers, many North American Indian languages endure. A few speech communities remain remarkably intact, with the traditional language still acquired by most children and used for most social purposes. These communities are either geographically remote (such as Attikamek Cree) or protected by strong social boundaries (such as Picuris and Santo Domingo Pueblos). In most communities language use is rapidly eroding, and all are vulnerable to the homo-genizing trend of North American society.

The languages that are still spoken can be divided into five groups according to the size of their speech communities and their prospects for long-term survival:

1Languages with only one known native speaker, and consequently on the verge of extinction. At the time of writing there were five languages in this category: Eyak, Klamath-Modoc, Northern Pomo, Tolowa, and Unami Delaware.

2Languages with more than one native speaker but fewer than ten, and rapidly approaching extinction. Included here are thirty-six languages: Achumawi, Ari-kara, Central Pomo, Central Sierra Miwok, Chiwere, Coeur d’Alene, Eastern Pomo, Holikachuk, Ipai Diegueño, Kawaiisu, Kiksht, Kiliwa, Kings River Yokuts, Kiowa Apache (Plains Apache), Klallam, Konkow, Lake Miwok, Lui-seno, Lushootseed, Mandan, Northern Sierra Miwok, Osage, Patwin, Pawnee, Sarcee (Tsuut’ina), Serrano, Southern Pomo, Southern Sierra Miwok, Tubatu-labal, Tule-Kaweah Yokuts, Tuscarora, Wappo, Western Abenaki, Wichita, Wintu-Nomlaki, and Yuchi (Euchee).

3Languages with from ten to 100 speakers, none of them children. These lan-guages are severely endangered, but will probably continue to have a few first-language speakers for at least another generation. About one third (forty-four) of surviving languages fall into this category, and include: Ahtna, Bella Coola, Caddo, Cahuilla, Columbian, Comanche, Comox, Copper Island Aleut Creole, Gros Ventre (Atsina), Haida, Han, Hare, Hupa, Ingalik (Deg Xinag), Karuk, Kashaya, Kumeyaay Diegueño, Kutenai, Lower Tanana, Makah, Menominee, Mohave, Mono, Naukanski Yupik, Nez Perce, Nitinaht, Nootka (Nuuchah-nulth), Northern Straits Salish, Omaha-Ponca, Onondaga, Paipai, Panamint (Tümpisa Shoshone), Potawatomi, Sechelt, Sekani, Spokane-Kalispel, Squam-ish, Tahltan, Tanacross, Tanaina (Dena’ina), Upper Kuskokwim, Valley Yokuts, Washo, and Yurok.

4Languages with more than 100 speakers but fewer than 1,000, some of them still spoken by at least a few children. These languages are endangered, but most will survive for two or more generations. There are forty-seven languages in this category: Alabama, Aleut, Assiniboine (Nakota), Babine, Bearlake, Beaver, Cayuga, Chickasaw, Chilcotin (Tsilhqot’in), Cocopa, Gwich’in (Kutchin), Haisla, Halkomelem, Heiltsuk-Oowekyala, Hidatsa, Jicarilla, Kaska, Kiowa, Koasati (Coushatta), Koyukon, Kwakiutl (Kwak’wala), Lillooet (St’a-t’imcets), Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, Maricopa, Maritime Tsimshianic, Michif, Mountain, Nass-Gitksan, Northern Paiute (Paviotso), Northern Tutchone, Okanagan, Oneida, Pacific Yupik (Alutiiq), Picuris, Quechan (Yuma), Sahaptin, Sauk-Fox (Mesquakie), Seneca, Shawnee, Shuswap (Secwepemc), Southern Tutchone, Taos, Thompson, Tipai Diegueño, Tlingit, Upper Tanana, and Win-nebago (Ho-Chunk).

5Languages with 1,000 or more speakers, all of them being acquired by children. There are fifty-five languages in this category, with the largest (Navajo) having about 120,000 speakers; the average number of speakers is between 9,000 and 10,000. Of the fifty-five languages, twenty-one are sub-languages of two wide-spread Algonquian languages, Cree and Ojibwe, and of three equally wide-spread Eskimo languages, Greenlandic, Inuktitut, and Inupiaq. None of these languages is seriously endangered and most are likely to survive for at least a century, although in the longer term their status is far from secure. Included in this category are: Acoma-Laguna, Arapaho, Blackfoot, Carrier, Central Alas-kan Yup’ik, Central Siberian Yupik,Cherokee, Cheyenne, Chipewyan, Choctaw, Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi (eight sub-languages), Creek (Muskogee), Crow, Dogrib, Greenlandic (two sub-languages), Hopi, Inuktitut (two sub-languages), Inupiaq (two sub-languages), Jemez, Kickapoo, Mescalero-Chiricahua, Micmac, Mikasuki, Mohawk, Navajo, Ojibwe (seven sub-languages), Rio Grande Keresan, Shoshoni, Sioux, Slave, Southern Tiwa, Stoney, Tewa, Upland Yuman, Upper Piman (O’odham), Ute-Chemehuevi, Western Apache, Yaqui (Yoeme), and Zuni.

Extinct languages

As noted above, sixty-five languages are known to have become extinct before 1930. No memory of these languages being fluently spoken survives among modern des-cendants. Equally important, the last speakers died before the advent of tape recorders or easily portable phonograph disc recorders, and thus no significant documentation of their spoken reality exists beyond the written transcriptions of linguists, anthro-pologists, missionaries, and (not infrequently) untrained amateur collectors. The future study, and possible revitalization, of these languages must depend on archival research, and the prospects vary with the abundance of documentation. As many as fifty of the sixty-five are little more than scholarly curiosities, attested only in a few wordlists that sometimes date back (as with Laurentian and Virginia Algonquian) four centuries or more. Fewer than a dozen can be called well attested, in the majority of cases owing to the the diligent work of survey linguists working for the Bureau of American Ethnology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This includes the extensive documentation of Eastern Atakapa and Biloxi by Albert S. Gatschet; of Kathlamet and Pentlatch by Franz Boas; and of Chochenyo, Mutsun and Rumsen—three Cos...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Maps
• General introduction
• 1 North America
• 2 Latin America
• 3 Europe and North Asia
• 4 South Asia and the Middle East
• 5 East and Southeast Asia
• 6 Australasia and the Pacific
• 7 Africa
• Index of languages