IF language is a virus, as rock star Laurie Anderson proclaims, then a handful have proved remarkably easy to catch. Just five languages 鈥� Chinese, English, Spanish, Russian and Hindi 鈥� have now infected more than half of the world鈥檚 people. Add fewer than 100 other languages to the list and the infection rate is more than 95 per cent of the Earth鈥檚 population.
Yet the planet is also home to some 6000 other languages 鈥� the vast majority spoken by only tiny numbers of people. More than half of these languages could well die out with their last remaining speakers sometime during the next hundred years.
This fate is certain for Aore, now confined to the sole native inhabitant of an island in the remote Pacific republic of Vanuatu. It is one of the dozens of languages spoken by only one or two people, says Andrew Woodfield, who directs the Centre for Theories of Language and Learning at the University of Bristol.
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And in Ethiopia, where at least 90 languages are spoken, minority languages which traditionally found refuge in isolated pockets of the country now face an uncertain future, according to Dick Hayward of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Although some Ethiopians speak as many as six or seven languages, many are used by just a handful of people. At the last count, for example, Ongota has 19 speakers, Elmolo 6 speakers, and the last two speakers of Gafat died some years ago when a linguist took them out of the jungle to the highlands, where they caught colds.
About a third of the world鈥檚 languages are now spoken by fewer than a thousand people and are in immediate danger. But linguists fear that even languages with hundreds of thousands of speakers may soon succumb to pressure from the 鈥渂ig鈥� prestige languages. At most, only 600 of the world鈥檚 languages can be described as 鈥渟afe鈥�, says Michael Krauss, a linguist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.
It is easy, says Krauss, to spot a language on the brink of extinction: parents will have stopped teaching it to their children, and children will have stopped wanting to learn it. According to Krauss, only 2 of the 20 native languages of Alaska are still learnt by children. So, in a generation or two, ways of communicating that have endured many centuries will be lost for ever. In the Americas, more than 100 languages are on the critical list, each with fewer than 300 speakers. In Papua New Guinea, more than 100 indigenous languages are thought to be in the same predicament. And all round the world, the list of endangered languages shows the same pattern.
Yet there are those who see this loss of language as inevitable, and not entirely a matter for regret. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, for example, argues that the homogenisation of language is a force for global harmony and economic efficiency. Take India. 鈥淲ith the coming of electronic mass media, Hindi is finally spreading because everyone wants to watch the best television programming,鈥� Murdoch said last year. The same story may be repeated in China, as satellite TV spreads Mandarin Chinese across the nation. 鈥淚n which case, it will be not only prosperity that we will catch in our networks,鈥� says Murdoch, 鈥渂ut also order 鈥� and, ultimately, peace.鈥�
Linguists, needless to say, are less sanguine about the loss of languages. 鈥淓ach language is unique in a deep sense,鈥� says Christopher Moseley, a linguist at the BBC and editor of Routledge鈥檚 new Atlas of the World鈥檚 Languages. 鈥淚t is the repository of accumulated thoughts and experiences of people, their metaphors and specialised knowledge, their unique experiences that developed over many lifetimes.鈥� As Woodfield puts it, each time a language dies 鈥渨e lose something we do not even understand鈥�. Languages need to be preserved first and foremost because they help people to retain their culture, argues Krauss. 鈥淭he world would be less beautiful and less interesting without linguistic diversity.鈥�
But 鈥渞omantic鈥� arguments may cut little ice with the world at large, says Mark Pagel, a biomathematician in the zoology department of the University of Oxford. Pagel believes that when we lose a language we lose a way of perceiving the world. Preserve an endangered language and its speakers, he argues, and you preserve not only a way of speaking but a way of learning. Language and culture are so intimately entwined, that they are 鈥渁lmost one and the same thing鈥�.
Earlier theorists put the case more strongly. In the 1930s, two American linguists, Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf, argued that language determines the way individuals think. For instance, Whorf claimed that one North American Indian tribe, the Hopi, had no concept of time because it seemed to be absent in their language. Subsequent generations of anthropologists have discovered that the Hopi do in fact have a concept of time. And the idea that language equates directly with thought is no longer fashionable.
But Pagel鈥檚 theory is more subtle. He suggests that language communities have 鈥減articular habits of mind鈥� 鈥� or what he calls 鈥減erceptual habits and taxonomies of concepts鈥�. Nevertheless, Pagel still insists that learning a language permanently changes your brain 鈥� and by extension your mind. 鈥淚f French speakers鈥� minds differ from those of German speakers which differ from those of speakers of North Friesian then we may wish to preserve these ways of mind,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hey are living examples that demonstrate the adaptability of the human brain.鈥�
All babies can distinguish all linguistic sounds, Pagel points out, yet as adults, Japanese speakers can no longer discriminate between 鈥渓a鈥� and 鈥渞a鈥�. From this he concludes that 鈥渢he brains of Japanese-speaking adults differ from those of non-Japanese speaking adults, and do so at a physiological level鈥�.
If such brain differences exist, neuroscientists have yet to chart them. Nor is it clear whether they would differ in any fundamental way from the kind of changes in the brain that result from other forms of learning.
Many linguists remain sceptical about the idea that language influences thought. 鈥淚f it were true, you would be trapped in one way of thinking,鈥� says Kenneth Hale of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what education is all about 鈥� learning about other ways of thinking.鈥� Pagel counters by claiming that people with different language dependent thought patterns 鈥渕ay never quite appreciate the mind of their interlocutor, even if they appreciate that differences exist鈥�.
Trying to understand
If people disagree about why languages should be conserved, they also have different ideas about the forces that produce and sustain linguistic diversity in the world. Generations of scholars have studied linguistic diversity to shed light on the origins of language and to chart the evolution of human culture. In recent years, human population geneticists, notably Luigi Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford University, have added another dimension. They use data on human genetic variation to try to understand linguistic variation -and vice versa.
Broad correlations have turned up. Using some fancy statistics, for instance, Cavalli-Sforza has linked the world鈥檚 20 or so major language groups to geographical variations in the frequencies of certain genes. At a finer level, demographers note that the Amerindians of the mid-American continent and the Inuit of the northern regions form two distinctly different groups, on both linguistic and genetic grounds.
Pagel has attempted to go a step further, by asking what caused languages to diversify and proliferate in the first place. He wants to show that the diversity of human languages can be studied as a zoological phenomenon amenable to the laws of ecology 鈥� what he calls 鈥渓inguistic ecology鈥�. Working with Ruth Mace, in the Department of Anthropology at University College London, Pagel reasoned that the distribution of human languages might show global trends, just as living organisms do.
Ecologists have long known that as you move from the poles to the equator, the number of different species increases. More creatures live in tropical rainforests than in the icy frozen wastes of the Arctic and Antarctic. There is a similar trend in the size of the territory animals range over: those living near the North Pole range over much greater areas than do those at the equator. Both these ecological 鈥渞ules鈥� also apply to languages, Mace and Pagel claim.
The researchers looked at the density of human language groups in North America at the time of contact by colonising Europeans. Six times as many languages were spoken in a given area in southern latitudes compared with similar-sized areas nearer to the poles. Pagel and Mace also believe that they have discovered a link between latitude and the territorial ranges of North American languages: languages in the north tended to be spoken over greater areas than languages in the south. And to complete the picture, the researchers found that linguistic diversity in North America in the 16th century was greatest in areas with the greatest diversity of habitats, whatever the latitude.
鈥淗uman language is clearly influenced by its ecological context,鈥� says Pagel, who concludes from his research that cultural and linguistic diversity feeds off biological diversity 鈥� that languages have multiplied and thrived in places where natural selection has produced a rich variety of landscapes, animals and plants. Were the world not such a diverse place, predicts Pagel, we wouldn鈥檛 have so many languages.
This does not tend to go down well with most linguists. Practitioners of the social sciences are reluctant to have the myriad complexities of languages reduced to a natural phenomenon that can be modelled by mathematics, and they are sceptical about sweeping, global explanations of linguistic diversity. Whether languages live or die they argue, often depends on local, chance events with little to do with biology. 鈥淚t is misleading to talk about language change as some great natural force,鈥� says one social scientist.
Equally unpopular with linguists is the idea that the evolution of languages can be studied by analogy with biological evolution. Pagel believes that changes in words can be regarded as 鈥渕utations鈥�. And just as biologists assume DNA is subjected to a steady 鈥渂ackground鈥� rate of mutation, so words may also mutate at a steady rate in evolutionary time. 鈥淟inguists resist this approach,鈥� says Pagel. 鈥淭hey see languages as so richly varied that they cannot be reduced to a few lines of mathematics.鈥�
But even Pagel sees limitations in his biological approach to language. 鈥淲e are losing languages even when biological diversity is kept static,鈥� he says, pointing out that where English is spoken, typically between 80 and 90 per cent of the native languages have been lost. 鈥淐omments about biological diversity can sound rather patronising to people who are being slaughtered for economic reasons, and whose languages are disappearing because people are being killed.鈥� Technological change is also a large part of the equation 鈥� how else can we explain the fact that language diversity has been in decline since history began? The diversity of human language was probably at its peak 15 000 years ago, when some 10 000 languages were spoken by a human population 500 times smaller than it is today. Many of these tongues were swept away by the spread of agriculture. 鈥淭he success of agriculturalists in peopling the globe has homogenised language to some extent,鈥� says Pagel.
Dying in droves
Languages began dying in droves from the late 15th century onwards as Western Europeans colonised the world. In many places, people have abandoned languages for economic or political reasons. Multilingualism is often seen as a threat to the integrity of the state, and minority languages all too easily lose their market value.
Such trends are not inevitable. Since the fall of the Soviet Union there has been a resurgence of interest in Livonian, a language with less than 10 bona fide speakers that 300 years ago was spoken by tens of thousands of people living along the Latvian coast. Language classes are now thriving in Livonian villages, and the Latvian government funds a monthly radio programme and a newspaper in the language, which until now had no written form.
At the same time there are new forces at work. As media and communication technologies spread, more and more speakers of 鈥渕inority鈥� languages will abandon their linguistic heritage in favour of a dominant language associated with wealth, prestige and political power. It鈥檚 a phenomenon technically known as 鈥渓anguage shift鈥�, though some linguists also call it 鈥渓inguistic imperialism鈥� and 鈥渓inguistic genocide鈥�.
So what鈥檚 the solution? 鈥淭houghtfully planned bilingualism,鈥� says Einar Haugen, a linguist born in urban Iowa of Norwegian immigrant parents who became painfully aware of the fluctuating 鈥渕arket value鈥� of a language as a child, shunted between the US and Norway. Haugen wants each of us to have a 鈥渘ative, homely, familiar everyday language in which we can live and love鈥�, as well as a second 鈥渓anguage of wider communication鈥� that will enable us to jet around the world.
Bilingualism is 鈥渘ot harmful, but mind expanding鈥�, he argues. Anyone who thinks that learning a language may change the structure of the brain would have to agree.