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Anthropological Linguistics

Linguistic anthropology, the branch of anthropology that studies human languages, investigates their
structure, history, and relation to social and cultural contexts. Although it shares data, theories, and
methods with the more general discipline of linguistics, it differs in that it includes distinctly
anthropological questions, such as, how does language influence or reflect culture? And how does
language use differ among distinct members of a society?

In its early years, linguistic anthropology emphasized the documentation of languages of cultures
under ethnographic study-particularly those whose future seemed precarious due to colonization,
forced assimilation, population decimation, capitalist expansion, or other destructive forces. When
the first Europeans began to colonize the world five centuries ago, an estimated 12,000 distinct
languages existed. By the early 1900s-when anthropological research began to take off-many
languages and peoples had already disappeared or were on the brink of extinction. Sadly, this trend
continues, with predictions that nearly half of the world's remaining 6,000 languages will become
extinct over the next hundred years (Crystal, 2002; Knight, Studdert-Kennedy, & Hurford, 2000).

Linguistic anthropology, which studies contemporary human languages as well as those of the past, is
divided into four distinct branches: historical linguistics, descriptive linguistics, ethnolinguistics, and
sociolinguistics.

HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Historical linguistics deals with the emergence of language in general and how specific languages have
diverged over time. Some of the earliest anthropological interest in language focused on the historical
connections between languages. For example, nineteenth century linguists working with European
languages demonstrated similarities in the sound systems between a particular language and an
earlier parent language from which the language was derived. In other words, by comparing
contemporary languages, linguists have been able to identify certain language families. Through
techniques such as glottochronology, linguists can now approximate when two related languages
began to diverge from each other.

Historical linguists deal with the fact that languages change. In addition to deciphering "dead"
languages that are no longer spoken, they investigate relationships between earlier and later forms of
the same language, study older languages to track processes of change into modern ones, and
examine interrelationships among older languages.

For example, they attempt to sort out the development of Latin (spoken almost 1,500 years ago in
southern Europe) into the Romance languages of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Romanian
by identifying natural shifts in the original language, as well as modifications brought on by several
centuries of direct contact with Germanic-speaking invaders from northern Europe.

When focusing on long -term processes of change, historical linguists depend on written records of
languages. They have achieved considerable success in working out the relationships among different
languages, and these are reflected in classification schemes. For example, English is one of
approximately 140 languages classified in the larger Indo -European language family.

A language family is a group of languages descended from a single ancestral language. This family is
subdivided into eleven subgroups (Germanic, Romance, and so on), indicating that there has been a
long period (6,000 years or so) of linguistic divergence from an ancient, unified language
(reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European) into separate "daughter" languages. English is one of several
languages in the Germanic subgroup, all of which are more closely related to one another than they
are to the languages of any other subgroup of the Indo-European family.

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Despite the differences between them, the languages of one subgroup share certain features when
compared to those of another. As an illustration, the word for "father" in the Germanic languages
always starts with an f for closely related v sound (Dutch vader, German Vater, Gothic Fadar).

Among the Romance languages, by contrast, the comparable word always starts with a p: French pere,
Spanish and Italian padre-all derived from the Latin pater. The original Indo -European word for
"father" was p'ter, so in this case, the Romance languages have retained the earlier pronunciation,
whereas the Germanic languages have diverged.

Historical linguists are not limited to the faraway past, for even modern languages are constantly
transforming adding new words, dropping others, or changing meaning. Studying them in their specific
cultural context can help us understand the pro cesses of change that may have led to linguistic
divergence in the past.

DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS

Descriptive linguistics is the study of sound systems, grammatical systems, and the meanings attached
to words in specific languages. Every culture has a distinctive language with its own logical structure
and set of rules for putting words and sounds together for the purpose of communicating. In its
simplest form, the task of the descriptive linguist is to compile dictionaries and grammar books for
previously unwritten languages.

Descriptive linguistics involves unravelling a language by recording, describing, and analyzing all of its
features. It is a painstaking but ultimately rewarding process in that it provides deeper understanding
of a language-its structure, its unique linguistic repertoire (figures of speech, word plays, and so on).

The process of unlocking the underlying rules of a spoken language requires a trained ear and a
thorough understanding of the way multiple different speech sounds are produced. Without such
know-how, it is extremely difficult to write out or make intelligent use of any data concerning a
particular language.

Phonology

To describe and analyze any language, one needs first an inventory of all its distinctive sounds. The
systematic identification and description of the distinctive sounds in a language is known as phonetics.
Rooted in the Greek word phone (meaning "sou n d"), phonetics is basic to phonology, the study of
language sounds.

Some of the sounds used in other languages may seem very much like those of researchers' own
speech pattern, but others may be unfamiliar. For example, the th sound common in English does not
exist in the German language and is difficult for most German speakers to pronounce, just as the r
sound used in numerous languages is tough for Chinese speakers. And the unique "click" sounds used
in Bushmen languages in southern Africa are difficult for speakers of just about every other language.

While collecting speech sounds, linguists work to isolate the phonemes -the smallest units of sound
that make a difference in meaning. Linguists carry out this isolation and analysis through a process
called the minimal-pair test. They try to find two short words that appear to be exactly alike except
for one sound, such as bit and pit in English. If the substitution of b for p in this minimal pair makes a
difference in meaning, as it does in English, then those two sounds have been identified as distinct
phonemes of the language and will require two different symbols to record.

If, however, linguists find two different pronunciations (as when "butter" is pronounced "budder")
and then find no difference in their meaning for native speakers, the sounds represent ed will be
considered variants of the same phoneme. In such cases, for economy of representation only one of
the two symbols will be used to record that sound wherever it is found. As this example suggests,

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linguists distinguish many more phonemes (44) in English speech than the 26 letters in the English
alphabet.

Morphology, Syntax, and Grammar

While making and studying an inventory of distinctive sounds, linguists also look into morphology, the
study of the patterns or rules of word formation in a language (including such things as rules
concerning verb tense, pluralization, and compound words). They do this by marking out specific
sound s and sound combinations that seem to have meaning. These are called morphemes -the
smallest units of sound that carry meaning in a language.

Morphemes are distinct from phonemes, which can alter meaning but have no meaning by
themselves. For example, a linguist studying English
in a Canadian farming community would soon learn
that cow is a morpheme a meaningful combination
of the phonemes c, o, and w. Pointing to two of
these animals, the linguist would elicit the word
cows from local speakers. This would reveal yet
another morpheme-the s- which can be added to
the original morpheme to indicate plural.

The next step in unraveling a language is to identify

its syntax - the patterns or rules by which
morphemes, or words, are arranged into phrases
and sentences. The grammar of the language will ultimately consist of all observations about its
morphemes and syntax.

ETHNOLINGUISTICS

Cultural linguistics (also known as ethnolinguistics) is the branch of anthropological linguistics that
examines the relationship between language and culture. In any language, certain cultural aspects
that are emphasized (such as types of snow among the Inuit, cows among the pastoral Maasai, or
automobiles in U.S. culture) are reflected in the vocabulary of that language. Moreover, cultural
linguists explore how different linguistic categories can affect how people categorize their
experiences, how they think, and how they perceive the world around them.

In this type of research, anthropologists may investigate how a language reflects the culturally
significant aspects of a people's traditional natural environment. For example, Aymara Indians living
in the Bolivian highlands depend on the potato as their major source of food, and their language has
over 200 words for this vegetable, reflecting the many varieties they traditionally grow and the many
different ways that they preserve and prepare it.

Similarly, many people in the United States today possess a rich vocabulary allowing them to precisely
distinguish between many different types of cars, categorized by model, year, and manufacturer.
Another example concerns cultural categories of color: Languages have different ways of dividing and
naming the range of light in the electromagnetic spectrum visible to the naked human eye. In modern
English we speak of black, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, and white, as well as
"invisible" colors such as ultraviolet and infrared. Other languages mark out different groupings on
this continuum of hues. For instance, Indians in Mexico's North-western mountains speaking
Tarahumara have just one word for both green and blue- siyoname.

The idea that the words and grammar of a language are directly linked to culture and affect how
speakers of the language perceive and think about the world is known as linguistic relativity. This
theoretical concept is associated with the pioneering ethnolinguistic research carried out by U.S.
anthropologist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf during the 1930s. Focusing on the

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interplay of language, thought, and culture, their research resulted in what is now known as the Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis: the idea that each language provides particular grooves of linguistic expression
that predispose speakers of that language to perceive the world in a certain way.

Whorf gained many of these insights while translating English into Hopi, a North American Indian
language still spoken in Arizona. Doing this work, he discovered that Hopi differs from English not only
in vocabulary but also in terms of its grammatical categories such as nouns and verbs. For instance,
Hopi use numbers for counting and measuring things that have physical existence, but they do not
apply numbers in the same way to abstractions like time. They would have no problem translating an
English sentence such as, "I see fifteen sheep grazing on three acres of grassland;' but an equally
simple sentence such as, "Three weeks ago, I enjoyed my fifteen minutes of fame" would require a
much more complex translation into Hopi.

It is also of note that Hopi verbs express tenses differently than English verbs. Rather than marking
past, present, and future, with -ed, -ing, or will, Hopi requires additional words to indicate if an event
is completed, is still ongoing, or is expected to take place.

This shows that the Hopi language structures thinking and behaviour with a focus on the present-on
getting ready and carrying out what needs to be done right now. Based on his research on the Hopi
language and culture, Whorf developed his import ant theoretical in sight "that the structure of the
language one habitually uses influences the manner in which one understands his environment.

The picture of the universe shift s from tongue to tongue" (Carroll, 1956, p. vi). If language does mirror
cultural reality, it would follow that changes in a culture will sooner or later be reflected in changes in
the language. We see this happening all around the world today (Wolff & Holmes, 2011).

Both Sapir and Whorf were suggesting that language is more than a vehicle for communication; it
actually establishes mental categories that predispose people to see things in a certain way. For
example, if my language has a single word—aunt—that refers to my mother’s sister, my father’s sister,
my mother’s brother’s wife, and my father’s brother’s wife, it is likely that I will perceive all of these
family members as genealogically equivalent and consequently will behave toward them in essentially
the same way. Thus, Sapir and Whorf suggested that both perception and the resulting behaviour are
determined by the linguistic categories we use to group some things under one heading and other
things under another heading.

One very creative test of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis was made by Joseph Casagrande (1960), using
a matched sample of Navajo-speaking children. Half of the sample, who spoke only Navajo, were
matched on all significant sociocultural variables (such as religion, parental education, family income)
with the other half, who spoke both Navajo and English. Because the groups were identical on all
important variables except language, it would be logical to conclude that whatever perceptual
differences emerged between the two groups could be attributed to language.

Having a thorough knowledge of the Navajo language, Casagrande understood that Navajo people,
when speaking about an object, are required to choose among a number of different verb forms
depending on the shape of the object. When asking a Navajo speaker to hand you an object, you use
one verb form if the object is long and rigid like a stick and another verb form if it is long and flexible
like a rope. Based on this linguistic feature, Casagrande hypothesized that children who spoke only
Navajo would be more likely to discriminate according to shape than the English-speaking children.
English-speaking children would be more likely to discriminate according to other features such as size
or color.

This hypothesis was tested by having both groups of children participate in a number of tasks. The
children were shown two objects (a yellow stick and a blue rope) and then asked to tell which of these
two objects was most like a third object (a yellow rope). In other words, both groups of children were
asked to categorize the yellow rope according to likeness with either the yellow stick or the blue rope.

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Casagrande found that the children who spoke only Navajo had a significantly greater tendency to
categorize according to shape (yellow rope and blue rope) than the bilingual children, who were more
likely to categorize according to color.

According to their hypothesis, languages establish in our minds categories that force us to distinguish
between the things we consider different and the things we consider similar. For example, if Spaniards
and Japanese are shown instantaneously projected images of bull fighters and sumo wrestlers, the
Spaniards are likely to identify only the images of bull fighting while the Japanese will see only the
images of sumo wrestling. The explanation of this phenomenon is that perception is selective. Because
we are constantly being bombarded with far more stimuli than we can effectively process, our brains
filter out the less familiar pieces of information so that we can concentrate on the more familiar. And,
of course, what is familiar to any given person will be based on his or her learned experiences occurring
within a cultural context.

The power of language can also be seen in the in the way people use language to alter other people’s
perceptions of various things. For example, language can be used to mislead by making things appear
better than they actually are. Large organizations, such as corporations and branches of the federal
government, are particularly adept at using euphemisms—forms of language used to conceal
something unpleasant, bad, or inadequate. Companies no longer fire employees; rather, employees
are outplaced, released, dehired, or nonrenewed. Corporate structures are downsized,
reengineered, or restructured. Terms like reducing redundancy and enhancing efficiency are
designed to conceal the fact that the company is having problems. Military organizations use such
euphemisms as tactical redeployment to refer to a retreat of troops, pre-emptive strike to disguise the
fact that they attacked first, and regime change to gloss over the fact that a country’s sovereignty has
been violated.

This type of language, designed to alter our perception of what is real, is called doublespeak by linguist
William Lutz: Doublespeak, such as that which calls cab drivers urban transportation specialists,
elevator operators’ members of the vertical transportation corps, and automobile mechanics
automotive internists, can be considered humorous and relatively harmless. However, doublespeak
that calls a fire in a nuclear reactor building rapid oxidation, an explosion in a nuclear power plant an
energetic disassembly, the illegal overthrow of a legitimate administration destabilizing a government,
and lies inoperative statements is language that attempts to avoid responsibility, that attempts to
make the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, something unpleasant appear attractive, and
that which seems to communicate but does not.

Drawbacks to the Hypothesis The problem with the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis—and the reason it
remains a hypothesis rather than a widely accepted fact—is causation. Sapir and Whorf were linguistic
determinists who posited that language determines culture. In fact, Sapir suggested that people are
virtual prisoners of their language when he stated that “human beings . . . are very much at the mercy
of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society” (1929: 209).
Others have suggested that language simply reflects, rather than determines, culture. To be certain,
language and culture influence each other in important ways. Yet problems arise when attempting to
demonstrate that language determines culture, or vice versa, in any definitive way. What does seem
obvious, however, is that all people, being constantly bombarded with sensory stimuli, have
developed filtering systems to bring order to all of these incoming sensations.

Sapir, Whorf, and more recent scholars have suggested that one such filtering system is language,
which provides a set of lenses that highlight some perceptions and de-emphasize others. Today most
scholars agree that language does influence perception in certain limited ways. We cannot conclude
from this, however, that language forces or coerces people to have particular thoughts or perceptions,
or prevents them from thinking in certain ways.

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Whatever may be the precise effect of language on culture, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis has served to
focus attention on this important relationship.

SOCIOLINGUISTICS

The fourth branch of anthropological linguistics, known as sociolinguistics, examines the relationship
between language and social relations. For example, sociolinguists are interested in investigating how
social class influences the particular dialect a person speaks. They also study the situational use of
language—that is, how people use different forms of a language depending on the social situation
they find themselves in at any given time. To illustrate, the words and grammatical structures a U.S.
college student would choose when conversing with a roommate are significantly different from the
linguistic style used when talking to a grandparent or a potential employer during a job interview.

Anthropological linguists also engage in applied activities.

After describing the structure of a language, descriptive
linguists frequently take the next logical step and work
with educators to plan effective strategies for teaching
English as a second language. Some anthropological
linguists serve as consultants to government and
educational leaders responsible for setting language
policy in a state or country. Anthropological linguists
sometimes work with local (small-scale) minority groups
whose languages are spoken by so few people that they
are in danger of becoming extinct. Still other applied
linguists help design foreign language and culture programs for people who are preparing to live and
work abroad.

Sociolinguistics, the study of the relationship between language and society, examines how social
categories such as age, gender, ethnicity, religion, occupation, and class- influence the use and
significance of distinctive styles of speech.

Language and Gender

As a major factor in personal and social identity, gender is often reflected in language use, so it is not
surprising that numerous thought-provoking sociolinguistic topics fall under the category of language
and gender. These include research on gendered speech - distinct male and female speech patterns,
which vary across social and cultural settings. One of the first in-depth studies in this genre explored
the relationship of gender and power to explain why North American women exhibit less decisive
speech styles than men. A subsequent wave of related scholarly works have produced new insights
about language as a social speech "performance" in both private and public settings (Lakoff, 2004).

Social Dialects

Sociolinguists are also interested in dialects -varying forms of a language that reflect particular
regions, occupations, or social classes and that are similar enough to be mutually intelligible.
Distinguishing dialects from languages and revealing the relationship between power and language,
the famous U.S. linguist Noam Chomsky often quoted the saying that a dialect is a language without
an army.

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Such is the case in China, the world's most populous country with almost 1.4 bill ion inhabitants,
almost all of whom speak Chinese. In fact,
there are many Chinese languages, each
consist ing of many regional dialects.

Migrants from the northern parts of the

country, where numerous dialects of
Mandarin Chinese are traditionally spoken,
understand almost nothing of Chinese
languages spoken in the eastern and western
regions. For this reason, almost all Chinese nationals to day learn Standard Chinese, the country's
official language, historically developed as a lingua franca based on a Mandarin dialect traditionally
spoken in the country's capital city, Beijing.

Linguistic boundaries are not only geographic or territorial, but may also indicate or reflect social class,
economic status, political rank, or ethnic identity.

In many societies where different dialects are spoken, individuals often become skilled at switching
back and forth between them, depending on the situation in which they are speaking. Without being
conscious of it, we all do the same sort of thing when we switch from formality to informality in our
speech, depending on where we are and to whom we are talking. The process of changing from one
mode of speech to another as the situation demands, whether from one language to another or from
one dialect of a language to another, is known as code switching.

THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE

Cultures all around the world have sacred stories or myths addressing the age-old que stion of the
origins of human language. Anthropologists collecting these stories have often found that cultural
groups tend to locate the place of origin in their own ancestral homelands and believe that the first
humans also spoke their language.

Early scientific efforts to explain the origin of language suffered from a lack of solid data. Today, there
is more scientific evidence, including genetic information, to work with - better knowledge of primate
brains, new studies of primate communication, more information on the development of linguistic
competence in children, more human fossils that can be used to tentatively reconstruct what ancient
brains and vocal tracts were like, and a better understanding of the lifeways of early human ancestors.
We still cannot conclusively prove how, when, and where human language first developed, but we can
now theorize reasonably on the basis of more and better information.

The archaeological fossil and genetic records suggest that the archaic humans known as Neandertals
(living from about 30,000 to 125,000 years ago in Europe and southwestern Asia) had the neurological
and anatomical features necessary for speech. Recently discovered Denisova hominin’s genetic
analysis suggests that these archaic humans ranging in Asia were close enough to Neandertals-their
western "cousins" at the time - that they, too, shared that capacity.

Because human language is embedded within a gesture-call system of a type that we share with
nonhuman primates (especially great apes), anthropologists have gained considerable insight into
human language by observing the communication systems of fellow primates (Roberts, Roberts, &
Vick, 2014). Like humans, apes are capable of referring to events removed in time and space, a
phenomenon known as displacement and one of the distinctive features of human language (Fouts
& Waters, 2001; Lyn et al., 2014).

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Because there is continuity between gestural

and spoken language, the latter could have
emerged from the former through increasing
emphasis on finely controlled movements of the
mouth and throat. This scenario is consistent
with the appearance of neurological structures
underlying language in the earliest
representatives of the genus Homo and steady
enlargement of the human brain that began as
early as 2.5 million years ago. The soft tissues of
the vocal tract related to speech are not pre
served in the fossil record. But as outlined in the
Biocultural Connection in this chapter, a comparison of the vocal anatomy of chimps and humans
allows paleoanthropologists to identify the anatomical differences responsible for human speech that
appeared over the course of human evolution.

There are obvious advantages to spoken over gestural language for a species increasingly dependent
on tool use for survival. To talk with your hands, you must stop whatever else you are doing with them;
speech does not interfere with that. Other benefits include being able to talk in the dark, past opaque
objects, or among speakers whose visual attention is diverted. Although we do not know precisely
when the changeover to spoken language took place, all would agree that spoken languages are at
least as old as the species Homo sapiens.

THEORIES OF ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE

In Charles Darwin’s vision of the origins of language, early humans had already developed musical
ability prior to language and were using it “to charm each other.” We do know that the ability to
produce sound and simple vocal patterning (a hum versus a grunt, for example) appears to be in an
ancient part of the brain that we share with all vertebrates, including fish, frogs, birds and other
mammals. But that isn’t human language. We suspect that some type of spoken language must have
developed between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, well before written language (about 5,000 years
ago). Yet, among the traces of earlier periods of life on earth, we never find any direct evidence or
artifacts relating to the speech of our distant ancestors that might tell us how language was back in
the early stages.

The tool-making source theory:

In the physical adaptation view, one function

(producing speech sounds) must have been
superimposed on existing anatomical features
(teeth, lips) previously used for other purposes
(chewing, sucking). A similar development is
believed to have taken place with human hands
and some believe that manual gestures may
have been a precursor of language. By about
two million years ago, there is evidence that
humans had developed preferential right-
handedness and had become capable of making
stone tools. Wood tools and composite tools
eventually followed. Toolmaking, or the
outcome of manipulating objects and changing them using both hands, is evidence of a brain at work.

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According to Pilbeam the abundance of tools, smaller teeth and also controlled use of fire by the
erectus revealed that they cooked food and tool making and group living acted as selective forces.
These favoured the development of memory sites in Occipital lobe, thinking sites in frontal lobe and
different motor areas in cerebral cortex in the brain enabling the erectus population with symbolic
behaviour.

The genetic source theory

We can think of the human baby in its first few years as a living example of some of these physical
changes taking place. At birth, the baby’s brain is only a quarter of its eventual weight, and the larynx
is much higher in the throat, allowing babies, like chimpanzees, to breathe and drink at the same time.
In a relatively short period of time, the larynx descends, the brain develops, the child assumes an
upright posture and starts walking and talking This almost automatic set of developments and the
complexity of the young child’s language have led some scholars to look for something more powerful
than small physical adaptations of the species over time as the source of language. Even children who
are born deaf (and do not develop speech) become fluent sign language users, given appropriate
circumstances, very early in life. This seems to indicate that human offspring are born with a special
capacity for language. It is innate, no other creature seems to have it, and it isn’t tied to a specific
variety of language. Is it possible that this language capacity is genetically hard-wired in the newborn
human?

As a solution to the puzzle of the origins of language, this innateness hypothesis would seem to point
to something in human genetics, possibly a crucial mutation, as the source. This would not have been
a gradual change, but something that happened rather quickly. We are not sure when this proposed
genetic change might have taken place or how it might relate to the physical adaptations described
earlier. However, as we consider this hypothesis, we find our speculations about the origins of
language moving away from fossil evidence or the physical source of basic human sounds toward
analogies with how computers work (e.g. being pre-programmed or hardwired) and concepts taken
from the study of genetics. The investigation of the origins of language then turns into a search for the
special “language gene” that only humans possess.

A mutated gene known as FOXP2 helps explain why humans speak and chimps don’t (Paulson 2005).
The key role of FOXP2 in speech came to light in a study of a British family, identified only as KE, half
of whose members had an inherited, severe deficit in speech (Trivedi 2001). The same variant form of
FOXP2 that is found in chimpanzees causes this disorder. Those who have the nonspeech version of
the gene cannot make the fi ne tongue and lip movements necessary for clear speech, and their speech
is unintelligible—even to other members of the KE family (Trivedi 2001). Chimps have the same
(genetic) sequence as the KE family members with the speech defi cit. Comparing chimp and human
genomes, it appears that the speech- friendly form of FOXP2 took hold in humans around 150,000
years ago. This mutation conferred selective advantages (linguistic and cultural abilities) that allowed
those who had it to spread at the expense of those who did not (Paulson 2005). Language offered a
tremendous adaptive advantage to Homo sapiens. Language permits the information stored by a
human society to exceed by far that of any nonhuman group. Language is a uniquely effective vehicle
for learning. Because we can speak of things we have never experienced, we can anticipate responses
before we encounter the stimuli. Adaptation can occur more rapidly in Homo than in the other
primates because our adaptive means are more flexible.

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The natural sound source theory

A quite different view of the beginnings of language is based on the concept of natural sounds. The
human auditory system is already functioning before birth (at around seven months). That early
processing capacity develops into an ability to identify sounds in the environment, allowing humans
to make a connection between a sound and the thing producing that sound. This leads to the idea that
primitive words derive from imitations of the natural sounds that early men and women heard around
them. Among several nicknames that he invented to talk about the origins of speech, Jespersen (1922)
called this idea the “bow-wow” theory. The “bow-wow” theory In this scenario, when different objects
flew by, making a Caw-Caw or Coo-Coo sound, the early human tried to imitate the sounds and then
used them to refer to those objects even when they weren’t present.

Jespersen identified five theoretical frameworks that had been used in the past to explain language
origins. He designated them as follows:

i) The Bow-Wow Theory

According to this theory, language began when our ancestors started imitating the natural sounds
around them. The first speech was onomatopoeic—marked by echoic words such as moo, meow,

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splash, cuckoo, and bang. Humans imitated animal sounds that became increasingly more and more
complex to accommodate our communication needs.

What's wrong with this theory?

Relatively few words are onomatopoeic, and these words vary from one language to another. For
instance, a dog's bark is heard as au au in Brazil, ham ham in Albania, and wang, wang in China. In
addition, many onomatopoeic words are of recent origin, and not all are derived from natural sounds.

ii) The Ding-Dong Theory

This theory, favoured by Plato and Pythagoras, maintains that speech arose in response to the
essential qualities of objects in the environment. The original sounds people made were supposedly
in harmony with the world around them.

What's wrong with this theory?

Apart from some rare instances of sound symbolism, there is no persuasive evidence, in any language,
of an innate connection between sound and meaning.

iii) The La-La Theory

The Danish linguist Otto Jespersen suggested that language may have developed from sounds
associated with love, play, and (especially) song
P

What's wrong with this theory?

As David Crystal notes in "How Language Works" (Penguin, 2005), this theory still fails to account for
"... the gap between the emotional and the rational aspects of speech expression... ."

iv) The Pooh-Pooh Theory

This theory holds that speech began with interjections—spontaneous cries of pain ("Ouch!"), surprise
("Oh!"), and other emotions ("Yabba dabba do!"). Language started as emotional responses to things
like pain, pleasure, and surprise.

What's wrong with this theory?

No language contains very many interjections, and, Crystal points out, "the clicks, intakes of breath,
and other noises which are used in this way bear little relationship to the vowels and consonants found
in phonology."

v) The Yo-He-Ho Theory

According to this theory, language evolved from the grunts, groans, and snorts evoked by heavy
physical labor.

What's wrong with this theory?

Though this notion may account for some of the rhythmic features of the language, it doesn't go very
far in explaining where words come from.

As Peter Farb says in "Word Play: What Happens When People Talk" (Vintage, 1993): "All these
speculations have serious flaws, and none can withstand the close scrutiny of present knowledge
about the structure of language and about the evolution of our species."

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NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

The various means by which humans send and receive messages without using words (for example,
gestures, facial expressions, and touching).

To comprehend fully how people in any particular culture communicate, we must become familiar
with their nonverbal forms of communication in addition to their language. Nonverbal communication
is important because it helps us to interpret linguistic messages and often carries messages of its own.
In fact, it has been suggested that up to 70 percent of all messages sent and received by humans are
nonverbal.

Like language, nonverbal forms of communication are learned and therefore vary from one culture
to another. Even though some nonverbal cues have the same meaning in different cultures, an
enormous range of variation in nonverbal communication exists among cultures. In some cases, a
certain message can be sent in a number of different ways by different cultures. For example, whereas
in the United States we signify affirmation by nodding, the very same message is sent by throwing
the head back in Ethiopia, by sharply thrusting the head forward among the Semang of Malaya, and
by raising the eyebrows among the Dyaks of Borneo.

Humans communicate without words in a number of important ways, including hand gestures, facial
expressions, eye contact, touching, space usage, scents, gait, and stance. A thorough discussion of
these and other aspects of nonverbal communication, based on the recent literature, is beyond the
scope of this textbook.

A brief examination of three of the more salient types of nonverbal communication—hand gestures,
posture, and touching—will help convey the importance of this form of human communication.

Hand Gestures

Gestures are movements, usually of the hands, that convey meanings. Greetings, an important part
of communication in every known culture, often involve gestures ( Duranti 1997b ). They are typically
among the first communicative routines that children learn, as do tourists and anyone trying to learn
a foreign language. Greetings establish a social encounter.

They usually involve both verbal and nonverbal language. Depending on the context and the social
relationship, many variations exist for both the verbal and the nonverbal component. Contextual
factors include the degree of formality or informality. Social factors include gender, ethnicity, class,
and age.

Consider how many hand gestures we use every day. We cup our hand behind the ear as a nonverbal
way of communicating that we cannot hear. We thumb our noses at those we don’t like. We can
thumb a ride on the side of the highway. We can wave hello or good-bye. We tell people to be quiet
by holding our forefinger vertically against our lips. We give the peace sign by holding up our forefinger
and middle finger.

Or, by making a circle with our thumb and forefinger we can communicate that everything is A-OK.
However, problems arise with these gestures when we cross national boundaries. Although the A-OK
sign carries a positive, upbeat message in North America, it refers to money in Japan, zero (worthless)
in France, male homosexuality in Malta, and obscenity in parts of South America. Thus, a single hand
gesture carries with it many different meanings throughout the world. There are also many examples
of the opposite phenomenon— namely, the use of different gestures to send the same message. For
example, the nonverbal ways of communicating admiration for an attractive woman vary widely
throughout the world. The Frenchman kisses his fingertips, the Italian twists an imaginary moustache,
and the Brazilian curls one hand in front of another as if he is looking through an imaginary telescope.

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Silence

Silence is another form of nonverbal communication. Its use is often related to social status, but in
unpredictable ways. In rural Siberia, an in-marrying daughter-in-law has the lowest status in the
household, and she rarely speaks (Humphrey 1978). In other contexts, silence is associated with
power. For example, in U.S. courts lawyers speak more than anyone else and the judge speaks rarely
but has more power than a lawyer, while the silent jury holds the most power (Lakoff 1990).

The Western Apache use silence in four contexts:

• When meeting a stranger, especially at fairs, rodeos, or other public events. Speaking with a
stranger immediately indicates interest in something such as money, work, or transportation,
all possibly serving as reasons for exhibiting bad manners.
• In the early stages of courting. Sitting in silence and holding hands for several hours is
appropriate. Speaking “too soon” would indicate sexual willingness or interest.
• When a parent and child meet after the child has been away at boarding school. They should
be silent for about 15 minutes. It may be two or three days before sustained conversations
are initiated.
• When “getting cussed out,” especially at drinking parties. An underlying similarity of all these
contexts is the uncertainty, ambiguity, and unpredictability of the social relationships
involved.

Posture (Body Stance)

The way that people hold their bodies often communicates information about their social status,
religious practices, feelings of submissiveness, desires to maintain social distance, and sexual
intentions—to mention several areas. When communicating, people tend to orient their bodies
toward others by assuming a certain stance or posture.

A person can stand over another person, kneel, or “turn a cold shoulder,” and in each case the body
posture communicates something different. The meaning attached to different body postures varies
from one culture to another and is learned in the same way that other aspects of a culture are
internalized. To illustrate this point, we can look at differences in body posture that people assume
when relaxing.

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People in the United States, for example, are sitters, whereas people in some rural parts of Mexico
are squatters. This basic cultural difference has actually been used by the U.S. Border Patrol to
identify illegal immigrants. According to Larry Samovar and Richard Porter (1991), while flying
surveillance planes at low altitudes over migrant worker camps in southern California, the border
patrol can tell which groups of campers are squatting and which are sitting, the implication being that
the squatters are the illegal aliens.

Perhaps one of the most visible and dramatic nonverbal messages sent by posture is submissiveness.
Generally, submissiveness is conveyed by making oneself appear smaller by lowering the body
(crouching, cowering, or groveling). As part of their religious practices, some Christians kneel,
Catholics genuflect, and Muslims kowtow, an extreme form of body lowering in which the forehead is
brought to the ground. Nowhere is bowing more important to the process of communication today
than in Japanese society. Bowing initiates interaction between two Japanese, it enhances and
embellishes many parts of the ensuing conversation, and it is used to signal the end of a conversation.
As an indication of how pervasive bowing is in contemporary Japan, some Japanese department stores
employ people whose sole function is to bow to customers as they enter the store. In fact, bowing is
so ingrained in the Japanese psyche that some Japanese actually bow to invisible partners at the other
end of a telephone line.

Clothing, hairstyles, and modification

Clothing, hairstyles, and modification of or marks on the body convey messages about age, gender,
sexual interest or availability, profession, wealth, and emotions. The color of one’s clothing can send
messages about a person’s identity, class, gender, and more. In the United States, gender
differentiation begins in the hospital nursery with the color coding of blue for boys and pink for girls.
In parts of the Middle East, public dress is black for women and white for men.

Covering or not covering various parts of the body with clothing is another culturally coded matter.
Consider the different meanings of women’s head or face covering in Egypt and Kuwait (MacLeod
1992). Kuwaiti women’s head covering distinguishes them as relatively wealthy, leisured, and
honorable, as opposed to the immigrant women workers from Asia, who do not cover their heads. In
contrast, head covering in Egypt is done mainly by women from the lower and middle economic levels.
For them, it is a way to accommodate conservative Islamic values while preserving their right to work
outside the home. In Egypt, the head covering says, “I am a good Muslim and a good wife or daughter,”
while in Kuwait, the headscarf says, “I am a wealthy Kuwaiti citizen.” In many conservative Muslim
contexts, it is important for a woman in public to cover more than her head by wearing a full-length
loose garment. These rules, along with other patriarchal values, make it difficult for women in some
Muslim contexts to participate in sports while in school and in public sporting events such as the
international Olympics.

In Japan, the kimono provides an elaborate coding system signalling gender and life-cycle stage (Dalby
2001). The higher one’s status, the shorter is the sleeve of one’s kimono. Men’s kimono sleeves come
in one length: short. An unmarried woman’s kimono sleeves reach almost to the ground, whereas a
married woman’s sleeves are nearly as short as that of a man’s.

Touching (Haptics)

Touching is perhaps the most personal and intimate form of nonverbal communication. Humans
communicate through touch in a variety of ways or for a variety of purposes, including patting a person
on the head or back, slapping, kissing, punching, stroking, embracing, tickling, shaking hands, and
laying-on of hands. Every culture has a well-defined set of meanings connected with touching; that is,
each culture defines who can touch whom, on what parts of the body, and under what circumstances.
Some cultures have been described as high-touch cultures and others as low-touch. Some studies
(Montagu 1972; Sheflen 1972; Mehrabian 1981) have suggested that eastern European, Jewish, and
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Arab cultures tend to be high-touch cultures, whereas northern European cultures such as German
and Scandinavian cultures tend to be low-touch.

The difference between high- and low-touch cultures can be observed in public places, such as
subways or elevators. For example, Londoners (from a low-touch culture) traveling in a crowded
subway are likely to assume a rigid posture, studiously avoid eye contact, and refuse to even
acknowledge the presence of other passengers. The French (from a high-touch culture), on the other
hand, have no difficulty leaning and pressing against one another in a crowded Parisian subway. It is
surprising that there can be such significant differences in touching behavior between the English and
the French, two groups separated by only a narrow channel of water.

If we need a reminder that touching is a form of human communication, we need only to read the
international press over the past several years to see how some celebrities and world figures have
gotten themselves into hot water because of kissing someone in public. In April 2007 screen actor
Richard Geer, a Buddhist, caused a firestorm of protest when he kissed Indian actress Shilpa Shetty
several times on the neck when they appeared together at a televised charity event in Mumbai. Since
such public displays of affection, with unambiguous sexual overtones, are taboo in contemporary
India, Geer’s figure was burned in effigy in cities across India. A month earlier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
the religiously conservative president of Iran, was accused of indecency for publicly embracing and
kissing the gloved hand of his former schoolteacher. Such an act is contrary to Shariah (Islamic) law
and is sometimes punishable by death. In the cases of both Geer and Ahmadinejad, kissing a woman
in public (a very intimate form of touching) is definitely a form of communication because it makes an
explicit statement. Unfortunately, in both cases the meanings of the messages sent were different
from the meanings received.

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE:

For the cultural anthropologist, the study of language is important not only for the practical purpose
of communicating while doing fieldwork but also because a close relationship exists between language
and culture.

How Culture Influences Language

As a general rule, the vocabulary found in any language tends to emphasize the words that are
considered to be adaptively important in that culture. This concept, known as cultural emphasis, is
reflected in the size and specialization of vocabulary.

In standard American English, a large number of words refer to technological gadgetry (such as tractor,
microchip, and intake valve) and occupational specialties (such as teacher, plumber, CPA, and
pediatrician) for the simple reason that technology and occupation are points of cultural emphasis in
our culture. Thus, the English language helps North Americans adapt effectively to their culture by
providing a vocabulary well suited for that culture. Other cultures have other areas of emphasis.

The Nuer

A particularly good example of how culture influences language through the elaboration of
vocabularies is provided by the Nuer, a pastoral people of the Sudan, whose daily preoccupation with
cattle is reflected in their language (Evans-Pritchard 1940). The Nuer have a large vocabulary to
describe and identify their cattle according to certain physical features such as color, markings, and
horn configuration. The Nuer have ten major color terms for describing cattle: white (bor), black (car),
brown (lual), chestnut (dol), tawny (yan), mouse-gray (lou), bay (thiang), sandygray (lith), blue and
strawberry roan (yil), and chocolate (gwir). When these color possibilities are merged with the many
possible marking patterns, there are several hundred combinations. And when these several hundred
possibilities are combined with terminology based on horn configuration, there are potentially
hundreds of ways of describing cattle with considerable precision in the Nuer language.

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U.S. Example of Cultural Emphasis

In small-scale cultures such as the Nuer, where most people’s lives revolve around herding, areas of
cultural emphasis are fairly obvious. In middle-class American culture, which tends to be more
complex occupationally, it is not always easy to identify a single area of cultural emphasis.
Nevertheless, sports is one area of U.S. culture that can be shared by people from a wide variety of
occupational or class backgrounds. As Nancy Hickerson (1980: 118) pointed out, many colloquialisms
in American English are taken from the game of baseball, our national pastime:

■ He made a grandstand play.

■ She threw me a curve.

■ She fielded my questions well.

■ You’re way off base.

■ You’re batting a thousand (five hundred, zero) so far.

Language Mirrors Values

In addition to reflecting its worldview, a language reveals a culture’s basic value structure. For
example, the extent to which a culture values the individual, as compared to the group, is often
reflected in its linguistic style. The value placed on the individual is deeply rooted in the North
American psyche. Most North Americans start from the cultural assumption that the individual is
supreme and not only can, but should, shape his or her own destiny. That individualism is highly valued
in the United States and Canada as seen throughout their cultures, from the love of the automobile
as the preferred mode of transportation to a judicial system that goes as far as any in the world to
protect the individual rights of the accused. Even when dealing with children, North Americans try to
provide them with a bedroom of their own, respect their individual right to privacy, and attempt to
instill in them a sense of self-reliance and independence by encouraging them to solve their own
problems.

Because of the close connection between language and culture, values (such as individualism in
mainstream North America) are reflected in Standard American English. One such indicator of how
our language reflects individualism is the number of words found in any American English dictionary
that are compounded with the word self. To illustrate, one is likely to find in any standard English
dictionary no fewer than 150 such words, including self-absorbed, self-appointed, self-centered, and
self-confidence.

Outside of the U.S. mainstream, however, the assertion of self through the frequent use of I is
considered boorish, insensitive, self-promoting, impertinent, and even hostile. In group-oriented
cultures such as Japanese, people strive for the good of the larger group—such as the family or the
community. Rather than stressing the pursuit of individual happiness, the Japanese are more
concerned with justice (for group members) and righteousness (of group members).

How Language Influences Culture

Edward Sapir stated this notion in its most explicit form:

The real world is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two
languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The
worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different
labels attached. (1929: 214)

The Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis

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Drawing on Sapir’s original formulation, Benjamin Lee Whorf, a student of Sapir, conducted
ethnolinguistic research among the Hopi Indians to determine whether different linguistic structures
produced different ways of viewing the world. Whorf’s observations convinced him that linguistic
structure was in fact the causal variable for different views of the world. This notion has come to be
known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.

Testing the Hypothesis Since Sapir and Whorf’s original formulation, other ethnolinguists have
attempted to test the hypothesis. One very creative test of the

Sapir–Whorf hypothesis was made by Joseph Casagrande (1960), using a matched sample of Navajo-
speaking children. Half of the sample, who spoke only Navajo, were matched on all significant
sociocultural variables (such as religion, parental education, family income) with the other half, who
spoke both Navajo and English.

Because the groups were identical on all important variables except language, it would be logical to
conclude that whatever perceptual differences emerged between the two groups could be attributed
to language.

Having a thorough knowledge of the Navajo language, Casagrande understood that Navajo people,
when speaking about an object, are required to choose among a number of different verb forms
depending on the shape of the object. When asking a Navajo speaker to hand you an object, you use
one verb form if the object is long and rigid like a stick and another verb form if it is long and flexible
like a rope. Based on this linguistic feature, Casagrande hypothesized that children who spoke only
Navajo would be more likely to discriminate according to shape than the English-speaking children.
English-speaking children would be more likely to discriminate according to other features such as size
or color.

The power of language can also be seen in the way people use language to alter other people’s
perceptions of various things. For example, language can be used to mislead by making things appear
better than they actually are. Large organizations, such as corporations and branches of the federal
government, are particularly adept at using euphemisms—forms of language used to conceal
something unpleasant, bad, or inadequate. Companies no longer fire employees; rather, employees
are outplaced, released, dehired, or nonrenewed. Corporate structures are downsized, reengineered,
or restructured.

This type of language, designed to alter our perception of what is real, is called doublespeak by linguist
William Lutz.

Drawbacks to the Hypothesis

The problem with the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis—and the reason it remains a hypothesis rather than a
widely accepted fact—is causation. Sapir and Whorf were linguistic determinists who posited that
language determines culture. In fact Sapir suggested that people are virtual prisoners of their language
when he stated that “human beings . . . are very much at the mercy of the particular language which
has become the medium of expression for their society” (1929: 209).

Others have suggested that language simply reflects, rather than determines, culture. To be certain,
language and culture influence each other in important ways. Yet problems arise when attempting to
demonstrate that language determines culture, or vice versa, in any definitive way. What does seem
obvious, however, is that all people, being constantly bombarded with sensory stimuli, have
developed filtering systems to bring order to all of these incoming sensations.

Sapir, Whorf, and more recent scholars have suggested that one such filtering system is language,
which provides a set of lenses that highlight some perceptions and de-emphasize others.

Conclusion

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Today most scholars agree that language does influence perception in certain limited ways. We cannot
conclude from this, however, that language forces or coerces people to have particular thoughts or
perceptions, or prevents them from thinking in certain ways. Whatever may be the precise effect of
language on culture, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis has served to focus attention on this important
relationship.

ENDANGERED LANGUAGES:

Language is the only tool for expressing identity and culture as well as one of the greatest emblems of
human diversity. There are 7,000 living languages in the world and around 3,000 are considered as
‘endangered’. This means that almost half of the planet’s current linguistic diversity is under threat.

The situation in India is alarming. Some 197 languages are in various stages of endangerment in our
country, more than any other country in the world. Ganesh N Devy, founder-director of the Bhasa
Research and Publication Centre, Vadodara and
Adivasi Academy at Tejgadh, Gujarat, said, “India may
have lost 220 languages since 1961. There were 1,100
languages since 1961, based on the Census number of
1,652 mother tongues. Another 150 languages could
vanish in the next 50 years.”

There are five tribal languages that are moving towards

extinction in India. Linguist experts say that the most
threatened language is Majhi in Sikkim. According
to a research conducted by People’s Linguistic Survey
of India, there are just four people who currently
speak Majhi and all of them belong to the same family.
Similarly, the Mahali language in eastern
India, Koro in Arunachal Pradesh, Sidi in Gujarat
and Dimasa in Assam are facing extinction.

Until recently, UNESCO has put Asur, Birhor and Korwa

in its list of the world’s endangered languages with
Birhor being categorised as ‘Critically Endangered’,
with just 2,000 speakers left.

Criteria For Declaring Endangered:

UNESCO provides a classification system in its ‘Atlas of

Endangered languages’ as: (a) Vulnerable – most
children speak the language, but it may be restricted to
certain domains (e.g., home); (b) Definitely
endangered – children no longer learn the language as a ‘mother tongue’ in the home; (c) Severely
endangered – language is spoken by grandparents and older generations; while the parent generation
may understand it, they do not speak it to children or among themselves; (d) Critically endangered –
the youngest speakers are grandparents and older, and they speak the language partially and
infrequently; (e) Extinct – there are no speakers left.

According to UNESCO, any language that is spoken by less than 10,000 people is potentially
endangered. In India, after the 1971 census, the government decided that any language spoken by
less than 10,000 people need not be included in the official list of languages.

From 1971 onwards, the Census has been counting only of those languages that have more than
10,000 speakers. It resulted in a decline in the list of languages to 108 languages in the 1971 Census,
as against 1,652 a decade ago.

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Factors Responsible for Making Language Endangered

a) There is a link between higher levels of schooling and language loss, as regionally dominant
languages taught in class often overshadow indigenous tongues.
b) A second factor exacerbating the threat to endangered languages is the density of roads in an
area. While contact with other languages can help preserve indigenous ones, exposure to the
wider world may not.
c) Lack of employment avenues to speaker of endangered languages
d) One of the major reasons for extinction of language is absence of script
e) Marginalised by English
f) Social Stigma attached to speakers of indigenous/local languages. They are seen as
illiterate/lower class people. Hence learning new language becomes a necessity for class
mobility as well as social mobility.
g) Speakers of minority languages have suffered a long history of persecution. Well into the
20th Century, many Native American children in Canada and the US were sent to boarding
schools, where they were often forbidden to speak their native language. Today, many
English-speaking Americans are still hostile towards non-English speakers, especially Spanish
ones.
h) Languages usually reach the point of crisis after being displaced by a socially, politically and
economically dominant one, as linguists put it. In this scenario, the majority speaks another
language – English, Mandarin, Swahili – so speaking that language is key to accessing jobs,
education and opportunities. Sometimes, especially in immigrant communities, parents will
decide not to teach their children their heritage language, perceiving it as a potential
hindrance to their success in life.

Consequences of Extinction of Language/Why to Preserve Languages:

Languages are conduits of human heritage. Writing is a relatively recent development in our history
(written systems currently exist for only about one-third of the world’s languages), so language itself
is often the only way to convey a community’s songs, stories and poems. The Iliad was an oral story
before it was written, as was The Odyssey. “How many other traditions are out there in the world that
we’ll never know about because no-one recorded them before the language disappeared?”

Languages also convey unique cultures. Cherokee, for example, has no word for goodbye, only “I will
see you again”. Likewise, no phrase exists for “I’m sorry”. On the other hand, it has special expressions
all its own. One word – oo-kah-huh-sdee –represents the mouth-watering, cheek-pinching delight
experienced when seeing an adorable baby or a kitten. All of these things convey a culture, a way of
interpreting human behaviour and emotion that’s not conveyed the same way as in the English
language. Without the language, the culture itself might teeter, or even disappear. If we are to survive,
to continue on and to exist as a people with a distinct and unique culture, then we have to have a
language.

Another argument mirrors that of biodiversity conservation. Just as ecosystems provide a wealth of
services for humanity – some known, others unacknowledged or yet to be discovered – languages,
too, are ripe with possibility. They contain an accumulated body of knowledge, including about
geography, zoology, mathematics, navigation, astronomy, pharmacology, botany, meteorology and
more. In the case of Cherokee, that language was born of thousands of years spent inhabiting the
southern Appalachia Mountains. Cherokee words exist for every last berry, stem, frond and toadstool
in the region, and those names also convey what kind of properties that object might have – whether
it’s edible, poisonous or has some medicinal value. No culture has a monopoly on human genius, and
we never know where the next brilliant idea may come from. We lose ancient knowledge if we lose
languages.

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Finally, languages are ways of interpreting the world, and no two are the same. As such, they can
provide insight into neurology, psychology and the linguistic capacities of our species. Different
languages provide distinct pathways of thought and frameworks for thinking and solving problems

When a language dies, its speakers decide to migrate. First, they migrate to another language and
then they physically start migrating to another region. The second thing that happens is that their
traditional livelihood patterns go down. They may have some special skills and that disappears.
Thirdly, a unique way of looking at the world disappears. Every language is a unique worldview.

Steps to be Taken:

Linguists are scrambling to document and archive the diversity of quickly disappearing languages.
Their efforts include making dictionaries, recording histories and traditions, and translating oral
stories.

Technology can help these efforts. Many speakers are using technology to do really interesting things
that were not imaginable a generation back. For example, a version of Windows 8 is available in
Cherokee, and a Cherokee app allows speakers to text in the language’s 85 letters.

Another initiative is the Rosetta Project, a global collaboration of language specialists and native
speakers working to build an open-access digital library of human languages.

We need to create livelihood support for the speakers of the language. If they have livelihood available
within their language, nobody would want to switch from their language to any other language.

The UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages (IDIL2022-2032), which begins this
year, also aims to engage the global community with the critical issue of language loss.

The 10-year initiative continues the work of the UN’s 2019 International Year of Indigenous
Languages. As part of its Global Action Plan, IDIL2022-2032, it is creating a network of international
stakeholders focused on protecting the rights of indigenous people to revitalize and preserve
their languages.

The Government of India has initiated a Scheme known as “Protection and Preservation of
Endangered Languages of India”. Under this Scheme, the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL),
Mysore works on protection, preservation and documentation of all the mother tongues/languages
of India spoken by less than 10,000 speakers keeping in mind the degree of endangerment and
reduction in the domains of usage.

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