Languages and Bio-diversity

2008 is the International Year of Languages, isn't it ? Recently, read about the danger of extinction hundreds of languages around the world. It seems, there are a few languages which are spoken by less than 5 people. And, if they die, the language will also die with them. Being with the adivasis here in Gudalur, I can understand why protection of languages should be high on the agenda.

Anita sent a nice email about the role played by languages in protecting bio-diversity and important knowledge about forests, plants and animals. The article says that more than half of the world's 7,000 languages are endangered; many face extinction in the next century. Reproducing some parts of that email here :

"Interestingly, the projects funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) could save more than just a few mother tongues. It might also protect plants and animals.

Talk about diversity!


When the nonprofit organization Terralingua mapped the distribution of languages against a map of the world's biodiversity, it found that the places with the highest concentration of plants and animals, such as the Amazon Basin and the island of New Guinea, were also where people spoke the most languages.

As well as serving as indicators of biodiversity, languages also act as good signs of cultural diversity and a group's understanding of surrounding environments, because people store communal knowledge in their language.

"Wherever humans exist, they have established a strong relationship with the land, and with the biodiversity that exists there," said anthropologist and Terralingua President Luisa Maffi. "They have developed a deep knowledge of the plants and animals, the local ecology, as well as a knowledge about how to use and manage the resources to ensure continued sustenance of biodiversity."

Languages hold valuable knowledge about how to preserve biodiversity.

Native languages have many names for plants that describe how and where they grow, as well as their medicinal uses. But the meanings often do not survive translation from one language to another. "If you've learned something about a plant from a speaker of an indigenous language, but you don't use the language, it's harder to pass on that knowledge," said linguist Pamela Munro of UCLA.



As one example, members of the Native American group called the Sekani practiced controlled burning of the forests of British Columbia to regenerate the forest and keep the understory clear for game animals. Their methods also kept the mountain pine beetle pest at bay.

A small pox epidemic decimated the indigenous people and the timber industry took over the management of the forests, putting a stop to the controlled burns. Since the 1990's, without the regular burnings, the beetle's outbreak has destroyed more than 7 million acres of forest. "The forests have been made unusable because the native populations have not been allowed to continue those practices," Maffi said. "Ultimately their communities will have to disperse, which will lead to a loss of cultural and linguistic diversity."

When I see the explosion of Tamil in internet, I am hopeful that my mother tongue will survive for centuries.

Probably, having the script is the key. Since most of the adivasi languages do not have scripts, they are quite vulnerable.