Guwahati, Monday, December 4, 2006
EDITORIAL
MESSAGE FOR TODAY
I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigree of nations.
— SAMUEL JOHNSON
Voices lost and threatened
Many a miracle has happened amid the holy lands of the world. One was the revival of the Hebrew language, a fact that help bring alive a culture rich in spiritual and metaphysical thought. The work of the Israeli military commander turned archaelogist Yigal Yadin on the Dead Sea Scrolls went a long way in revealing how understanding a language was the key to comprehend history and culture. However, revival of an ancient language, or the quest to know about it is an onerous task. Unfortunately, in a fast paced world many languages are dying out and others are threatened by their neighbouring dominant languages. Across parts of the world regional and minority languages are facing threats and the attempt to save them have been few and far between. There have been no comprehensive studies to learn about the threatened or dying languages although researchers are working on some of them. In a place like India alone, more than 300 languages are reportedly threatened. Some of them have become coloured by another language and lost their unique characteristics, while others have witnessed a sharp decline in users. Consequently, they have become marginalised and it is only a matter of time before they disappear.
In the North East of India, the phenomenon is quite pronounced, as pointed out by the linguist Prof Scott DeLancey of the University of Oregon. He believed the region, which even now is home to several hundred languages and dialects, is in need of protecting the regional and minority languages. Scholars like him who study regional and minority languages believe it is more than a mode of communication that is lost when a language dies. Being a window to its users, their lifestyle, and their culture, the language acts as a key to a huge body of knowledge. No other language, and certainly not any neighbouring language could hope to unearth the traditional knowledge accessible to the threatened language. The difficulty faced by the users of an endangered language is even more and they have to contend with the challenge of using another language. The loss of their cultural identity is the other concern they endure when their own language stagnates or declines. Many of the communities in the North East, which have witnessed a crisis of identity, have also seen their own mother tongue lose its currency. Most of the indigenous communities do not know how to grapple with the prospect of losing their language even as they are keen on finding a solution.
The dying of languages and cultures is not an unnatural process, but at the same time timely interventions have helped extend the life of endangered languages. In the case of the North East, an effective strategy to protect endangered languages could be to study, document and develop such languages under a tested scientific protocol. Prof DeLancey, during a recent visit remarked that a bridge of knowledge connecting the Department of Linguistics of Gauhati University and other institutions like the University of Oregon could enable sharing of knowledge and experience to protect several languages of the North East. Training of manpower would indeed be the first step in seeking to establish the characteristics of different languages as well as showing their commonalities. Young researchers could carry out projects on identifying threats to the languages, which could thereafter attract possible measures to protect and promote them. The Gauhati University’s Department of Linguistics could play a nodal role in coordinating a number of projects. It could be the storehouse of information for different languages, and provide access to future researchers. While some of the languages would inevitably disappear in the mist of time, comprehensive documentation would still be able to retain crucial facts and information on them.