Tessa Barrett-Walker, Michael J. Plank, Rachael Ka’ai-Mahuta, Daniel Hikuroa, and Alex James have a recent article Kia kaua te reo e rite ki te moa, ka ngaro: do not let the language suffer the same fate as the moa (J. R. Soc. Interface 17 [2020]: 20190526), whose abstract reads:
More than a third of the world’s languages are currently classified as endangered and more than half are expected to go extinct by 2100. Strategies aimed at revitalizing endangered languages have been implemented in numerous countries, with varying degrees of success. Here, we develop a new model regarding language transmission by dividing the population into defined proficiency categories and dynamically quantifying transition rates between categories. The model can predict changes in proficiency levels over time and, ultimately, whether a given endangered language is on a long-term trajectory towards extinction or recovery. We calibrate the model using data from Wales and show that the model predicts that the Welsh language will thrive in the long term. We then apply the model to te reo Māori, the indigenous language of New Zealand, as a case study. Initial conditions for this model are estimated using New Zealand census data. We modify the model to describe a country, such as New Zealand, where the endangered language is associated with a particular subpopulation representing the indigenous people. We conclude that, with current learning rates, te reo Māori is on a pathway towards extinction, but identify strategies that could help restore it to an upward trajectory.
As JC, who sent me the link, points out: “Makes specific reference to a statistical study predicting that Welsh will be (near)universal in Wales 300 years hence!” Should be music to the ears of a certain Kusaal-oriented Hatter… (Thanks, John!)
“We did NOT modify the model to describe ANOTHER country, such as Great Britain, where the [Welsh] language is associated with a particular subpopulation representing the indigenous people.”
This reminds FWIW that someone recently pointed out to me this article with some interesting background about how “indigenous” became a worldwide UN-blessed category (and the motivations for that), combined with some criticisms of the category as currently used. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/27/its-time-to-rethink-the-idea-of-the-indigenous
Should be music to the ears of a certain Kusaal-oriented Hatter
From their paper to God’s ears …
But neither wishing, nor misapplied maths, will make it so.
It’s no use setting up a pretty statistical model, abstracting away all the stuff that you either have decided is irrelevant a priori or (more likely) just found too intractable to deal with, and imagining that it has predictive value just because it looks nice. You have test the damn thing somehow before you can have any idea at all about whether it actually works. They need to run the gagdet on some historical data and see whether what it predicts actually, like, happened.
(It’s like a time-inverted twin of all those daft papers in Nature purporting to Solve Comparative Linguistics by Bayesian methods and magical thinking.)
Personally, I think that the best hope for the long-term survival of Welsh is if there is near-total collapse of industrial civilisation quite soon. I must say it’s looking quite promising.
Ah, the side effects of Brexit.
… a country, such as New Zealand, where the endangered language is associated with a particular subpopulation representing the indigenous people.
I think that doesn’t characterise the status of Te Reo in NZ as at today: nearly everybody knows at least a few words/some culturally significant concepts and artefacts have only a Māori name. (I see that research is 4 years old, so would reflect the effect of nearly a decade of unsympathetic/Rightist government.)
We’ve just been celebrating Te Matatini cultural extravaganza/competition — postponed because of the Covid and nearly disrupted by the North Island floods. Indeed many performers had arduous journeys to get there from their broken townships. I’d describe the culture and language as thriving.
Furthermore Te Reo connects across Polynesia (as we’ve been examining on a recent thread). Specifically Cook Islands Māori is mutually intelligible; most New Zealanders have visited Rarotonga on holiday.
Contrast I lived in Britain 40 years and never came across Welsh except when visiting actual Wales (and only a very few parts of it). You can’t live in NZ and be unaware of Te Reo.
The video here of our Prime Minister + opposition leader being welcomed [**] at the **annual** ceremony marking the signing of the treaty between Māori and the Crown.
[**] This is a ‘wero’ (variation of ‘haka’): both a welcome and a threat to be on respectful behaviour — or else!
New Zealand is more comparable to “actual Wales” than to “Britain.”
As data goes, it’s not worth a hill of beans, but on a recent holiday to the tip of the East Cape region, not far from my wife’s tribal homeland and a traditional stronghold of te reo māori (basically an Aotearoa Gaeltacht) I was impressed to see that whenever informational government-funded sings were in only one language (almost all were in two), that one language was not English. As a non-Māori just beginning to learn the language, that made me inordinately and unscientifcally happy.
While we worry about currently endangered languages, I really wonder how smaller European languages like Romanian, Dutch, or Swedish will survive into the 22nd century. Everyone in the EU seems to accept that English is our default language of cross-border communication, higher education is increasingly taking place in English, and English is the language of entertainment (especially as “local” media like television, radio and newspapers become irrelevant to the younger generation). When immigrants, whether EU citizens or 3rd country nationals, move to a country like Romania, Slovakia, Netherlands or even Austria, they often work in English speaking environments and never need to learn the local language beyond the basics.
As we know languages can vanish with amazing speed once they hit a tipping point. We may even see some apparently robust languages become “endangered” within a generation.
Work is one thing, permanent immigration is another. When I hear 2nd generation immigrants talking in the shops or on the bus, they choose Danish and not English. Often a better Danish than the slovenly natives. (Things might be different if there were a native Anglophone in such a group, but there aren’t many of those).
English may be the working language in academia and multinationals, and documentation and emails might be almost entirely in English, but as soon as the non-Danes leave the meeting room it will be Danish, or maybe English domain terms in a Danish matrix.
Obviously the future is uncertain and there can be cusps and inflection points where things change quite rapidly, but … Romanian is at present per one online list (which probably lumps in Soviet-confected “Moldovan” as the same language) the ninth-most-spoken language in Europe by total speakers (L1 + L2), more than Danish/Icelandic/Norwegian/Swedish all aggregated together. Moreover, there are plenty of Romanian-speakers at present in rural areas and smaller cities not currently being overrun demographically with recent incomers who would rather just speak English as the universal L2 without mastering Romanian.
as soon as the non-Danes leave the meeting room it will be Danish
One of the many vitally important things that the above statistical model ignores is the importance of the domains in which a particular language is used.
In Africa, it is very common for polyglot locals to use each of their languages with pretty much L1 competence in various different specific domains. Languages can remain in use for a long time in such circumstance – perhaps indefinitely – even if all interaction with officialdom (say) takes place in a quite different language. Nobody talks about servicing a car in Kusaal (you speak Hausa or English or French when you do that.) If you go to the market, it’s likely you’ll spend all your time there speaking Hausa. But no Kusaasi would pass the time talking with their family or friends in any of those languages.
This “pick just one language and use if for everything” attitude is a product of modern technocratic state-building. That’s where the threat to “minority” languages lies. And it’s not an attitude that we are forced to embrace. To be wholly monolingual is a historical aberration.
A lot of well-meaning efforts on behalf of particular languages seems to fall into the trap of taking as a given this very same universalising-homogenising model that is actually at the root of the problem. Swahili must have its technical vocabulary, so that it can be used for discussion of engineering projects … but why should it be? Why should the survival of Swahili be considered to be in any way contingent on people being able to talk about software engineering it it (say)? (Not – happily – that Swahili seems currently to be on anyone’s danger list.)
Darn tootin’!
I don’t think you can call Danes monolingual, there are very few who don’t have at least functional English. But we expect cars to come with owner’s manuals in Danish, and we expect the mechanic to be able to explain what’s wrong with them in Danish, because with those prices they damn well should. Maybe the mechanic only has an English service manual and an English interface on the diagnostic instruments, but the mechanic is the one who has to think in two languages, the customer doesn’t. For “free” stuff like Google results, people don’t complain about English.
For some very specific domains, like RPG manuals in the early days, Danish wasn’t available and a number of 11 year olds got a large boost to their English reading proficiency. (Reportedly running their games in English as well). But for the mass markets, it’s Danish or get out. (Me, I wanted to read Stranger in a Strange Land at 11, after maybe 2 years of beginners’ classes. The struggle is eternal).
And that frankly seems to be where the more globalized parts of Europe are headed.
Austria’s Finest News Source is entirely online, and occasionally lets slip that it expects you to have a large English vocabulary. It’s entirely in German, though.
Correction: this article has three sentences in English, but they’re direct quotes from an English-monoglot character, and all the other direct quotes of that character are rendered in German anyway. Except for one word that really doesn’t need to be translated. 🙂
A lot of well-meaning efforts on behalf of particular languages seems to fall into the trap of taking as a given this very same universalising-homogenising model that is actually at the root of the problem.
there are so many people whose typing hands i want to tattoo this on.
@David Marjanović: Actually, Bear Grylls is hardly a monoglot; he majored in foreign languages. I believe he has native-level fluency in Spanish at least, and he definitely knows some German as well. (Or maybe that’s part of the joke. I can’t tell.)
Oh! I had no idea. I had only read of Bear Grylls once before, and the same likely holds for the authors of that article…