Can we save the world’s dying languages

Canada Goose Jackets Along Lake canada goose uk outlet Eyasi in northern Tanzania I come across canada goose the Hadza community sitting in male and female canada goose uk shop only groups, with the men playing small lute like stringed instruments and applying a pre hunt poisonous tree resin to their metal arrowheads. They light a Canada Goose sale small fire by rapidly twisting a hardwood twig into a softwood stick from the local Commiphora tree. It soon smoulders and, intrigued, I have a go too. It’s surprisingly difficult, but with their help, I get it to smoke eventually. Canada Goose Jackets

Canada Goose Parka I’ve travelled four hours west from the city of Arusha to meet this ancient tribe of hunter gatherers, and join them in a bow and arrow hunt for prey among the thorn bushes. The Hadza people may have nothing no animals, land or possessions aside from the clothes on their backs but they are rich in the skills and resourcefulness they need to produce everything from their environment. Canada Goose Parka

cheap Canada Goose That not all that sets them apart from most societies. The Hadza are thought to be the most ancient modern humans, Canada Goose Parka the first surviving peoples to canada goose coats on sale have split off from our ancestral family tree, and are not closely related buy canada goose jacket genetically to any other peoples. Their language a clicking tongue, also called Hadza is unique and unrelated even to other clicking languages. Some linguists believe Hadza may be close to humankind’s first ancestral language. cheap Canada Goose

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canada goose black friday sale However the language may not be around for long. The Hadza bushmen, who live cheap canada goose uk in groups of around buy canada goose jacket cheap 15 people, are believed to have been living in this remote area for at least 10,000 years, but there are now less than 1,000 Hadza left. Fewer than 400 of them continue to live a stone age lifestyle they are among the last hunter gatherers in a continent of farmers and pastoralists. The numbers will continue to drop, as their land is swallowed up by farmers, government designated conservation areas and private game reserves. And their sing song tongue, punctuated with clicks and glottal stops, and which has no words for numbers past four, is no longer being learned canada goose clearance sale by all Hadza children. As the modern world encroaches, the language is in danger of being lost as Hadza make greater use of the widely spoken Swahili tongue. canada goose black friday sale

canadian goose jacket What is at risk is not simply the vocabulary and grammar of this unique language, but the Hadza’s and by extension, part of humanity’s cultural heritage and expression. canadian goose jacket

Canada Goose sale The Hadza are not alone in facing the loss of their native tongue. Every 14 days a language dies. Over half of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken on the planet may disappear by the end of the century. In the age of the Anthropocene, language extinction is happening faster than species extinction. Eighty percent of the Canada Goose Online endangered languages are African, including Hadza, and the majority have no written form. Once the last speaker dies, so canada goose clearance does the language. And for an oral culture, preserving language becomes even more important for maintaining the identity and heritage of a community. Canada Goose sale

canada goose deals It is said that with every language you speak canada goose factory sale you gain a new soul. canada goose uk black friday But 80% of the world’s population now speak just 1.1% of its languages, and universal languages, like English, dominate the internet, signage and the majority of published texts. So, is the Anthropocene becoming a duller place, in which the rich diversity of humanity’s full and wonderful language abilities cheap Canada Goose is reduced to a handful of tongues: English, Mandarin, and a few others? Are we in danger of losing our soul? canada goose deals

canada goose clearance sale https://www.canadagoose-jackets-online.com Not if some people have their way. canadian goose jacket Other languages have also been brought back from the brink of extinction through the sheer Canada Goose Jackets will and determination of their communities, including Welsh, Cornish, Gaelic and New Zealand Maori. canada goose clearance sale

canada goose clearance Language preservation works best when the language, culture and identity of minority speaker communities are respected by national governments rather than being banned, children are either fully taught in their mother tongue or given dedicated uk canada goose classes in it, in addition to learning the national or regional language. Evidence is mounting for the benefits of bi or multi lingualism, and for the social and psychological importance of mother tongue conservation, which allows conversation across multiple generations and strengthens cultural continuity and community identity. canada goose clearance

Canada Goose Outlet In some places, technology is Canada Goose Coats On Sale proving an unlikely saviour. K. David Harrison, a linguist at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania is creating ‘talking dictionaries’ of endangered languages Canada Goose Outlet that uk canada goose outlet help users to preserve the tongues digitally though audio recordings of native speakers and pictures, and has a YouTube channel for endangered languages. The languages can then be used more easily for text canada goose coats messages over mobile phones, for example. “In some cases, people have created an orthography [script] for languages that have never been written down, so they can send SMS messages to canada goose store each other,” he says. So far, Harrison has created talking dictionaries in eight languages that have never previously been recorded including ones in Papua New Guinea, Siberia and Paraguay, and has six more dictionaries on the way. Canada Goose Outlet

canada goose coats One of the benefits of the globalised internet, Harrison says, is that remote villagers with endangered languages can reach a global audience. For example, a hiphop duo from a village in Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India, has garnered more than 9,000 global viewers for their that’s more than ten times the number of Aka speakers. canada goose coats

canada goose store The Hadza have now also had their language preserved in a dictionary by Kirk Miller, an American linguist who spent eight months living with them. It might be just in time. When we return from the bush hunt, a couple of the Hadza men try to sell me a bow and arrow, while some of the women string beads to sell to tourists. New cash from these enterprises is funding an unhealthy supply of alcohol that is eroding their culture as surely as the Tanzanian government’s previous ‘civilising’ attempts. As communities cease to function productively, and individuals migrate away, fewer and fewer speakers will bear testimony to a way of life that was once practiced by the ancestors of us all. canada goose store

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