Guwahati, Saturday, December 2, 2006
Prof Scott DeLancey
Many NE languages endangered: expert
By Prabal Kr Das
GUWAHATI, Dec 1 – Not just modes of communication, they act like keys opening windows to comprehend people and cultures. But regional and minority languages are falling out of favour in many regions across the globe.
A large number of languages in North East India are endangered and if they disappear a vast corpus of traditional knowledge too would become inaccessible. The need for research and documentation is greater at present with younger generations gradually losing ties with the language of their ancestors.
Revealing this to The Assam Tribune today, Prof Scott DeLancey of the University of Oregon, said linguistic diversity in India’s North East is a rare occurrence made possible by the interface among three language families – Tibeto-Burman, Indic, and South East Asian.
Prof DeLancey, visiting the North East to interact with students and researchers of linguistics, asserts the region’s languages and dialects have to be studied and their characteristics established.
“The Tibeto-Burman language family itself has a considerable significance from the point of view of linguistics. As many as 300 languages extending across the trans-Himalayan region come under its ambit and its origins could be traced back to about 6,000 years,” he said.
In Asom there exists close to 100 languages, but their documentation and development remains incomplete. The majority of the languages possess no grammar, and no dictionary. Naturally the scope for linguistic studies is immense, he added.
The senior academic, an authority on descriptive linguistics, feels that the linguistic diversity of the North East need to be protected because “each of them is an unique way of looking at things.”
Different languages disclose how the users perceive the world, the range of their experiences, ideas and emotions. No translation could be equated with the depth and accuracy of a message conveyed through a particular language.
Language on many occasions is synonymous with a particular culture. The decline of a language usually sounded the death knell for an entire culture, a phenomenon not restricted to the North East.
A problem of studying languages in the North East, he thinks, is a shortage of trained researchers. And in this regard a bridge of knowledge connecting the departments of linguistics of Gauhati University and University of Oregon could act as a practical solution.
Describing the Gauhati University’s students of linguistics as able and talented he said training could equip them to study, document and develop the languages of the region. “People like me would be happy to share knowledge and experience. Moreover, we could organize an exchange of students from both the departments providing each with unique learning opportunities,” Prof DeLancey stated.
On the charge against English that it has threatened many regional languages, and pushed others to the brink, he said that in India the case was different. “It is the dominant regional languages, which overshadow minority languages. For instance, in North India it is Hindi that has threatened and endangered other languages.”
A survival strategy for the smaller and endangered languages could be based on capacity building involving users and researchers. Representatives of such languages could be trained to study, record and build up a database. Already possessing insights, which no outsider could possess, their work would animate linguistics and culture alike.