Reawakening Language
Many languages are struggling with fewer and fewer speakers. How can we help them? Leading linguists and an anthropologist examine some recent successes.
There are several thousand languages around the world but not all are in good health. It is thought that at least half of the languages alive today could cease to be spoken by the end of this century. What can we do about it? How do you re-awaken hibernating or dying languages and the cultures that go with them? Or, is some extinction inevitable? Bridget Kendall explores the positive things that are happening with some minority languages, focusing on Australia, Nepal and Hawaii with linguists Professor Ghil'ad Zuckermann and Dr. Candace Kaleimamoowahinekapu Galla and anthropologist Dr. Mark Turin.
Photo: 'Idea' written (clockwise from top) in Hebrew, Arabic, Yiddish and Indonesian. Illustration by Shan Pillay.
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Mark Turin
Mark Turin is an anthropologist, linguist and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the
University of British Columbia and Chair of the First Nations and Endangered
Languages Program.
His research interests are language conservation,
documentation and endangerment; orality, archives and cultural heritage. For
over twenty years, his regional focus has been the Himalayan region
(particularly Nepal, northern India and Bhutan), and more recently, the Pacific
Northwest.
He directs two international research initiatives, Digital
Himalaya and the World Oral Literature Project.
His office and home are
located on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the hÉnÌqÌÉminÌÉmÌ-speaking
Musqueam people.
Ghilâad Zuckermann
Professor Zuckermann is Chair of Linguistics and Endangered
Languages and Professor at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He is
Distinguished Visiting Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China) and
at the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), and serves as Editorial Board
member of the Journal of Language Contact.
He is a leading expert of âRevivalisticsâ, a new
trans-disciplinary field of enquiry surrounding language reclamation,
revitalization and reinvigoration. He is particularly interested in multiple
causation, cross-fertilization and horizontal gene transfer in languages, and
the relationship between language and identity.Â
Ghilâadâs linguistic interests are wide ranging but on this
âForumâ he focuses on indigenous languages in Australia.
Candace Ghalla
Candace Kaleimamoowahinekapu Galla is an indigenous language
advocate, educator and researcher. She is an assistant professor in First
Nations Languages and Education at the Department of Language & Literacy
Education at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Candace was born in Hilo, Hawaiâi. and raised in a sugar
plantation town, Pahala, in KaÊ»Ć«. She studied in Hawaii before moving to
Tucson, Arizona, for university.
Candace returned to
Hawaiʻi to take up the role of Visiting Assistant Professor in Ka Haka ʻUla O
KeÊ»elikĆlani College of Hawaiian Language at the University of HawaiÊ»i in Hilo,
before moving to British Columbia, where she now lives.
Broadcast
- Sat 3 Sep 2016 11:00±«Óătv Radio 4