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KUALA LUMPUR - Every two weeks on average, one of the 6,500 languages of the world vanishes with the death of its last elderly speakers, taking with it a wealth of cultural knowledge, experts say.
At a recent meeting in the Malaysian capital, linguistic experts said the United
States, Canada and Australia were the worse off, with a wealth of Asian languages also under threat.
"There is a vast treasure house of human knowledge," said Nicholas Ostler, President of Foundation for Endangered Languages, a UK-based group.
"So when a language is lost, it's just not the words but typically it's a kind of knowledge that came with that language."
According to a report in US magazine Cultural Survival, 89 per cent of the 154 tribal languages left in the United States were in imminent danger of extinction, with more than half having only a handful of elderly speakers.
In the state of Oklahoma for example, at least 14 languages -- including Hitchiti, Kaw, Kitsai and Peoria of the native Americans -- are no longer spoken.
The situation is no better in many parts of Asia, despite the region's cultural diversity. Experts said many governments were unwilling to address the issue for the sake of national unity.
"Traditionally, large number of languages have been seen as contributing to divisiveness to countries that are harder to govern, may be more unruly or may be poorer," said Ostler.
"Diversity is seen as a load on the government to deal with it," he said.
Disappearing dialects
In the Indian Ocean island of Andaman, the largest language there is down to just 20 speakers. And in tiny Brunei, linguists say some minority languages could face extinction within a generation or two, leaving behind only two or three languages.
"All the minority languages and dialects of Brunei are endangered," said Adrian Clyne, an English lecturer at a Brunei university. "In most cases, they are undocumented."
In Pakistan, linguists say Siraiki, a language spoken by 40 million people in the southwestern districts of the Punjab province, is under threat as people turn to English and Urdu in a bid to better their social and economic standing.
"They feel this Siraiki language has nothing to offer," said Pakistani linguist Saiqa Imtiaz Asif. "Siraiki-speaking students face constant dismissals, inequalities and put-downs."
"Siraikis have to learn English and Urdu to survive, to get good jobs. Probably they will come back to their heritage but it might be too late by then," she told Reuters.
China, which has some 235 living languages and dialects, is not immune to language loss in the wake of the rise of Mandarin, said Picus Sizhi Ding, a lecturer at Macau Polytechnic Institute.
As the predominant language, Mandarin has been vigorously promoted under the current language education policy, inevitably marginalizing other languages and dialects, he said.
There are few signs of hope, experts said. In south Australia, for example, the Kaurna people in the Adelaide plains have been working with linguists and musicians to reclaim Kaurna language that was considered to be extinct.
"If the new generation can be interested in a language, perhaps it doesn't need to die after all," said Ostler of the Foundation for Endangered Languages."
- REUTERS