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CHAPTER NO: 2. LANGUAGE ECOLOGY AND ENDANGERMENT

Question: Kinds and Rates of Language Shift?

Answer:

Introduction:
Language shift and language loss are not new phenomena. In some instances, language loss occurs when an entire
population of speakers is lost through disease, natural disaster, or warfare. Such cases are more infrequent in sudden attrition
have been documented historically. In colonial times, the spread of certain diseases which destroyed local populations certainly
caused the loss of languages without any written documentation.
More recently, ethnic and religious clashes, civil warfare, and the spread of certain diseases (such as HIV-AIDS) in
certain parts of the world have contributed to language loss.

Sudden language loss or abrupt language loss:

By and large language loss comes about through language shift and language attrition. More gradual kind of loss found
where the speakers of a language make a decision to stop speaking their ancestral language. People not speak it to their children
and to use another language instead. In such cases of more gradual shift and attrition, speakers abandon their language in favor
of a more dominant or ‘useful’ language over the course of one or more generations.

Factors:

Prestige of dominant language:

The language of the dominant population may thus have more social prestige and be associated with
socioeconomic development.

Language laws and policies:

In some cases, language shift may be facilitated or even created by language laws and policies which require
speakers to give up their mother tongue.
For example: US government’s policies toward Native American languages and the Soviet government’s
policies toward indigenous minority languages such as Siberia where the use of the majority language (English or
Russian) is preferred and punished speakers of indigenous languages.
Global languages pressure:
Global languages put even more pressure on indigenous languages. In regions of heavy multilingualism, social
and political advancement may be linked to knowledge of English or French.
For example: In Russia, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) where speakers of minority indigenous languages may feel
pressure to speak the regional or national language (Russian) or the global language (English).
Transitional bilingualism:
This type of attrition is gradual, speaker communities may be unaware that it is in progress until it is quite
advanced and the local language is seriously endangered. Children speaking a more dominant language, and sometimes
miss the fact that they are not speaking their parents’ (or grandparents’) first language.

Concluding remarks:
Some speakers and communities are quicker to give up their languages than others. It is therefore difficult, if not
impossible, to predict the exact rate of language shift globally. The most conservative estimates predict that 50 per cent of the
world’s languages will be lost over the course of this century.
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Question: Causes of Language Shift?

Answer:

Introduction:
Language shift occurs when the people in a particular culture change their primary language for communication. It is
also the process by which a speech community in a contact situation.
There are a number of factors which are known to motivate language shift:

Globalization:
Globalization puts even greater pressure on local languages and can be a major factor in language shift. The global
nature of trade and commerce has in recent decades put increasing pressure on the need for an international lingua franca
(English currently holds that position).

Urbanization:
Urbanization is another key cause of language shift and is itself related to cultural and social dislocation. Urbanization
brings people from different regions and cultures into the same living and working spaces. They are necessarily required to
communicate with one another and they turn to an established lingua franca or language of wider communication.

Biological and physical integrity:

Factors affecting the biological and physical integrity and safety of the speech community like natural catastrophes,
infections, diseases, famine, genocide, war and repression.

Economic situation:
Factors affecting the economic situation like globalization, open market economy, industrialization.

Culture and psychology of a community:

Factors affecting the culture and the collective psychology of a community like mobility, tourism, mass media, religious
practices and cultural assimilation.

Multilingualism:
In the modern world, multilingualism generally involves knowledge of one or more national languages. The shift stems
from a combination of factors including education, social prestige and socioeconomics.

Unnecessarily factors:
The national language provides a language of wider communication which makes knowledge of multiple local languages
less necessary or even superfluous, as the national language serves as a common lingua franca.

Media:
Media (and increasingly, the internet) bring languages of wider communication into the home.

Concluding remarks:
Thus the uses of the local language become increasingly limited with the net result that it is increasingly important and
for people to learn only a national language of wider communication.
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Question: What are the different Scales of Language Endangerment?

Answer:

A number of different scales are in use to express the actual level of endangerment.
Scale of Grenoble and Whaley:
Grenoble and Whaley propose a six-way distinction, arguing that at least this number of levels is required to capture
different stages of endangerment:
1. Safe
2. At risk
3. Disappearing
4. Moribund
5. Nearly extinct
6. Extinct
1. Safe:
 All generations use the language in all domains
 The language has a large speaker base relative to others spoken in the same region.
 A safe language usually has official status and typically functions as the language of government, education, and
commerce.
 Safe languages generally enjoy high prestige.
2. At risk:
 There is no observable pattern of a shrinking speaker base
 Used in a limited domains
 Have a smaller number of speakers than other languages in the same region.
3. Disappearing:
 A language is disappearing when there is an observable shift towards another language in the communities where it is
spoken
 Disappearing languages are consequently used in a more restricted set of domains
4. Moribund:
 The language is no longer transmitted to children and the speaker base is consistently shrinking.
5. Nearly extinct:
 Only a handful of speakers of the oldest generation remain.
6. Extinct:
 No remaining speakers.

Lack of transmission:
Lack of transmission of the language to children marks a significant change in language vitality.
Number of speakers:
One fundamental problem with any system for evaluating vitality is determining the number of speakers.
Scale of Krauss:
One particularly fine-grained categorization comes from Krauss (1997) who uses a ten-way distinction, which
distinguishes multiple levels according to the age and distribution of speakers and levels of usage. Krauss’s scale is particularly
informative because it breaks down the number of speakers by generation and by age within the older generations.
1. The language is spoken by all generations, including all, or nearly all, children
2. The language is learned by all or most children
3. The language is spoken by all adults, parental age and up, but learned by few or no children
4. The language is spoken by adults aged 30 and older, but not by younger parents
5. The language is spoken only by adults aged 40 and older
6. All speakers aged 50 and older
7. All speakers aged 60 and older
8. All speakers aged 70 and older
9. All speakers aged 70 and older, with fewer than 10 speakers
10. Extinct, no speakers
Such scales are potentially useful for a number of reasons. They can be useful to funding agencies in determining where
money is most needed for language documentation or revitalization program. They can be useful to researchers to help
determine research priorities.

Disadvantages:
Such scales give the mistaken impression that it is possible to identify and count speakers. They present a black-and-
white picture of language vitality which does not acknowledge different fluency levels for speakers.