Misplaced Pages

#685314

53-465: Bantik is an endangered Austronesian language , perhaps a Philippine language, of North Sulawesi , Indonesia . It is the traditional language of the Bantik people  [ id ] (a subgroup of Minahasans ), who are now switching to Manado Malay (the local variety of Malay ) as their language for everyday communication. While using Indonesia for formal and religious occasions. Though Bantik

106-485: A community with special collective rights . Language can also be considered as scientific knowledge in topics such as medicine, philosophy, botany, and more. It reflects a community's practices when dealing with the environment and each other. When a language is lost, this knowledge is often lost as well. In contrast, language revitalization is correlated with better health outcomes in indigenous communities. During language loss—sometimes referred to as obsolescence in

159-470: A dominant position in a country. Speakers of endangered languages may themselves come to associate their language with negative values such as poverty, illiteracy and social stigma, causing them to wish to adopt the dominant language that is associated with social and economical progress and modernity . Immigrants moving into an area may lead to the endangerment of the autochthonous language. Dialects and accents have seen similar levels of endangerment during

212-433: A fraction of the world's linguistic diversity, therefore their picture of what human language is—and can be—will be limited. Some linguists consider linguistic diversity to be analogous to biological diversity, and compare language endangerment to wildlife endangerment . Linguists, members of endangered language communities, governments, nongovernmental organizations, and international organizations such as UNESCO and

265-655: A larger sign language or dispersal of the deaf community) can lead to the endangerment and loss of their traditional sign language. Methods are being developed to assess the vitality of sign languages. While there is no definite threshold for identifying a language as endangered, UNESCO 's 2003 document entitled Language vitality and endangerment outlines nine factors for determining language vitality: Many languages, for example some in Indonesia , have tens of thousands of speakers but are endangered because children are no longer learning them, and speakers are shifting to using

318-399: A new Language and Culture Documentation Services Unit that aims to preserve and revitalize languages threatened by extinction. The creation of this department reflects a growing interest in documenting endangered languages and incorporates a multidisciplinary approach of anthropology and linguistics. SIL has Consultative Status with UNESCO as an NGO, and has Special Consultative Status with

371-584: A number of international settings. In 1973, SIL was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding. This foundation honors outstanding individuals and organizations working in Asia who manifest greatness of spirit in service to the peoples of Asia. UNESCO Literacy Prizes have been awarded to SIL's work in a number of countries: Australia (1969), Cameroon (1986), Papua New Guinea (1979), Philippines (1991). In 1979, SIL's agreement

424-774: A working relationship with the Mexican Secretariat of Public Education under the government of President Lázaro Cárdenas (in office 1934–1940) and founded SIL to educate linguist- missionaries to work in Mexico. Because the Mexican government did not allow missionary work through its educational system, Townsend founded Wycliffe Bible Translators in 1942 as a separate organization from SIL. Wycliffe Bible Translators focused on Bible translation and missionary activities, whereas SIL focused on linguistic documentation and literacy education. Having initiated collaboration with

477-455: Is also sometimes referred to as language revival or reversing language shift . For case studies of this process, see Anderson (2014). Applied linguistics and education are helpful in revitalizing endangered languages. Vocabulary and courses are available online for a number of endangered languages. Language maintenance refers to the support given to languages that need for their survival to be protected from outsiders who can ultimately affect

530-452: Is still used as a marker of ethnic identity . Bantik is regarded as a men's language, used by men in private, and it is considered improper to speak to women in Bantik. Very few women under the age of 30 know how to speak it. Bantik is agglutinative . The basic sentence orders of Bantik are subject–verb–object and verb–object–subject . The former is used when introducing a new object,

583-500: The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages , there are four main types of causes of language endangerment: Causes that put the populations that speak the languages in physical danger, such as: Causes that prevent or discourage speakers from using a language, such as: Often multiple of these causes act at the same time. Poverty, disease and disasters often affect minority groups disproportionately, for example causing

SECTION 10

#1732772315686

636-642: The Linguistic Society of America passed a resolution that the work of SIL "should be strongly commended by our Society and welcomed as one of the most promising developments in applied linguistics in this country." SIL holds formal consultative status with UNESCO and the United Nations , and has been publicly recognized by UNESCO for their work in many parts of Asia. SIL also holds non-governmental organization status in many countries. SIL's work has received appreciation and recognition in

689-728: The Northwest Pacific Plateau . Other hotspots are Oklahoma and the Southern Cone of South America. Almost all of the study of language endangerment has been with spoken languages. A UNESCO study of endangered languages does not mention sign languages. However, some sign languages are also endangered, such as Alipur Village Sign Language (AVSL) of India, Adamorobe Sign Language of Ghana, Ban Khor Sign Language of Thailand, and Plains Indian Sign Language . Many sign languages are used by small communities; small changes in their environment (such as contact with

742-655: The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) as an advocate for ethnolinguistic communities. The organization is a member of the Forum of Bible Agencies International and Micah Network , and is a founding member of Maaya, the World Network for Linguistic Diversity. Ethnologue: A Guide to the World's Languages has been published by SIL since 1951. From the 13th edition (1997) onwards,

795-611: The national language (e.g. Indonesian ) in place of local languages. In contrast, a language with only 500 speakers might be considered very much alive if it is the primary language of a community, and is the first (or only) spoken language of all children in that community. Asserting that "Language diversity is essential to the human heritage", UNESCO's Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages offers this definition of an endangered language: "... when its speakers cease to use it, use it in an increasingly reduced number of communicative domains, and cease to pass it on from one generation to

848-704: The 16th edition (2009), Ethnologue uses the ISO 639-3 standard, which assigns 3-letter codes to languages; these were derived in part from the 3-letter codes that were used in the Ethnologue 's 15th edition. SIL is the registration authority for the ISO 639-3 standard. With the publication of the 17th edition (2016), Ethnologue launched a subscription service, but claiming that the paywall would only affect 5% of users. Users who contribute over 100 accepted changes are rewarded with lifetime free access. A comprehensive review of

901-529: The 16th, 17th and 18th editions acknowledged that "[Ethnologue] is at present still better than any other nonderivative work of the same scope" except that "[it] fails to disclose the sources for the information presented. SIL has developed widely used software for linguistic research. SIL has developed several widely used font sets that it makes available as free software under the SIL Open Font License (OFL). The names of SIL fonts reflect

954-472: The 21st century due to similar reasons. Language endangerment affects both the languages themselves and the people that speak them. This also affects the essence of a culture. As communities lose their language, they often lose parts of their cultural traditions that are tied to that language. Examples include songs, myths, poetry, local remedies, ecological and geological knowledge, as well as language behaviors that are not easily translated. Furthermore,

1007-642: The Biblical mission of the organization " charis " (Greek for "grace"), " doulos " (Greek for "servant") and " gentium " (Latin for "of the nations"). These fonts have become standard resources for linguists working on the documentation of the world's languages. Most of them are designed only for specific writing systems, such as Ethiopic , Devanagari , New Tai Lue , Hebrew , Arabic , Khmer , Yi , Myanmar , Coptic , and Tai Viet , or some more technical notation, such as cipher musical notation or IPA . Fonts that support Latin include: The 1947 Summer Meeting of

1060-533: The Christian Bible into local languages, and aid minority language development. Based on its language documentation work, SIL publishes a database, Ethnologue , of its research into the world's languages, and develops and publishes software programs for language documentation, such as FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEx) and Lexique Pro. Its main offices in the United States are located at

1113-678: The European Union are actively working to save and stabilize endangered languages. Once a language is determined to be endangered, there are three steps that can be taken in order to stabilize or rescue the language. The first is language documentation, the second is language revitalization and the third is language maintenance. Language documentation is the documentation in writing and audio-visual recording of grammar , vocabulary, and oral traditions (e.g. stories, songs, religious texts) of endangered languages. It entails producing descriptive grammars, collections of texts and dictionaries of

SECTION 20

#1732772315686

1166-808: The International Linguistics Center in Dallas, Texas . William Cameron Townsend , a Presbyterian minister, founded the organization in 1934, after undertaking a Christian mission with the Disciples of Christ among the Kaqchikel Maya people in Guatemala in the early 1930s. In 1933, he turned to Mexico with the purpose of translating the Bible into indigenous languages there, as he had done for Kaqchikel. Townsend established

1219-638: The Mexican education authorities, Townsend started the institute as a small summer training-session in Sulphur Springs, Arkansas , in 1934 to train missionaries in basic linguistic , anthropological , and translation principles. Through the following decades the SIL linguists worked at providing literacy education to indigenous people of Mexico, while simultaneously working with the Wycliffe Bible Translators on Bible translation. One of

1272-643: The SIL Bibliography. Most of these are a reflection of linguistic fieldwork. SIL's focus has not been on the development of new linguistic theories, but tagmemics , though no longer promoted by SIL, was developed by Kenneth Pike , who also coined the words emic and etic , more widely used today in anthropology. Another focus of SIL is literacy work, particularly in indigenous languages. SIL assists local, regional, and national agencies that are developing formal and informal education in vernacular languages. These cooperative efforts enable new advances in

1325-430: The SIL view, ethnocide is not a valid concept and it would lead to pessimism to characterize culture change resulting from the inevitable progress of civilization as ethnocide. SIL considers itself as actively protecting endangered languages by promoting them within the speech community and providing mother-tongue literacy training. Additionally, their expanded interest in preserving threatened languages has resulted in

1378-490: The U.S. as experts aiming to share their knowledge and expand their skills". SIL International SIL Global (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics International ) is an evangelical Christian nonprofit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages , especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy , translate

1431-480: The cities or to other countries, thus dispersing the speakers. Cultural dominance occurs when literature and higher education is only accessible in the majority language. Political dominance occurs when education and political activity is carried out exclusively in a majority language. Historically, in colonies, and elsewhere where speakers of different languages have come into contact, some languages have been considered superior to others: often one language has attained

1484-892: The complex field of educational development in multilingual and multicultural societies. SIL provides instructors and instructional materials for linguistics programs at several major institutions of higher learning around the world. In the United States , these include Dallas International University , Biola University , Moody Bible Institute , and Dallas Theological Seminary . Other universities with SIL programs include Trinity Western University in Canada , Charles Darwin University in Australia , and Universidad Ricardo Palma in Lima, Peru. The organization has recently established

1537-524: The contributions of linguists globally. Ethnologue's 2005 count of languages in its database, excluding duplicates in different countries, was 6,912, of which 32.8% (2,269) were in Asia, and 30.3% (2,092) in Africa. This contemporary tally must be regarded as a variable number within a range. Areas with a particularly large number of languages that are nearing extinction include: Eastern Siberia , Central Siberia , Northern Australia , Central America , and

1590-461: The cycles of language death and emergence of new languages through creolization as a continuous ongoing process. A majority of linguists do consider that language loss is an ethical problem, as they consider that most communities would prefer to maintain their languages if given a real choice. They also consider it a scientific problem, because language loss on the scale currently taking place will mean that future linguists will only have access to

1643-523: The data that have been gathered and analyzed from over 1,000 minority and endangered languages, many of which had not been previously studied academically. SIL endeavors to share both the data and the results of analysis in order to contribute to the overall knowledge of language. This has resulted in publications on languages such as Hixkaryana and Pirahã , which have challenged the universality of some linguistic theories. SIL's work has resulted in over 20,000 technical publications, all of which are listed in

Bantik language - Misplaced Pages Continue

1696-408: The dispersal of speaker populations and decreased survival rates for those who stay behind. Among the causes of language endangerment cultural, political and economic marginalization accounts for most of the world's language endangerment. Scholars distinguish between several types of marginalization: Economic dominance negatively affects minority languages when poverty leads people to migrate towards

1749-517: The earliest is GIDS (Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale) proposed by Joshua Fishman in 1991. In 2011 an entire issue of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development was devoted to the study of ethnolinguistic vitality, Vol. 32.2, 2011, with several authors presenting their own tools for measuring language vitality. A number of other published works on measuring language vitality have been published, prepared by authors with varying situations and applications in mind. According to

1802-501: The entire contents of the published book were also shared online. From the 17th edition onwards (2013) the publication shifted to a web-centric paradigm, meaning that the website is now the primary means by which the database is accessed. Among other advantages, this greatly facilitates user contributions. A new edition is now published every February. The 27th edition was released in February 2024 and lists 7,164 languages. Starting with

1855-416: The languages, and it requires the establishment of a secure archive where the material can be stored once it is produced so that it can be accessed by future generations of speakers or scientists. Language revitalization is the process by which a language community through political, community, and educational means attempts to increase the number of active speakers of the endangered language. This process

1908-405: The latter when introducing a new subject. Endangered language Language shift most commonly occurs when speakers switch to a language associated with social or economic power or one spoken more widely, leading to the gradual decline and eventual death of the endangered language. The process of language shift is often influenced by factors such as globalisation, economic authorities, and

1961-399: The linguistic literature—the language that is being lost generally undergoes changes as speakers make their language more similar to the language that they are shifting to. For example, gradually losing grammatical or phonological complexities that are not found in the dominant language. Generally the accelerated pace of language endangerment is considered to be a problem by linguists and by

2014-424: The missionary focus of SIL makes relations with academic linguists and their reliance on SIL software and knowledge infrastructure problematic in that respective goals, while often overlapping, also sometimes diverge considerably. SIL does not consider efforts to change cultural patterns a form of culture destruction and points out that all their work is based on the voluntary participation of indigenous peoples. In

2067-536: The most part, not learning the language. The third stage of language extinction is seriously endangered . During this stage, a language is unlikely to survive another generation and will soon be extinct. The fourth stage is moribund , followed by the fifth stage extinction . Many projects are under way aimed at preventing or slowing language loss by revitalizing endangered languages and promoting education and literacy in minority languages, often involving joint projects between language communities and linguists. Across

2120-455: The next. That is, there are no new speakers, adults or children." UNESCO operates with four levels of language endangerment between "safe" (not endangered) and "extinct" (no living speakers), based on intergenerational transfer: "vulnerable" (not spoken by children outside the home), "definitely endangered" (children not speaking), "severely endangered" (only spoken by the oldest generations), and "critically endangered" (spoken by few members of

2173-482: The number of speakers of a language. UNESCO seeks to prevent language extinction by promoting and supporting the language in education, culture, communication and information, and science. Another option is "post-vernacular maintenance": the teaching of some words and concepts of the lost language, rather than revival proper. As of June 2012 the United States has a J-1 specialist visa , which allows indigenous language experts who do not have academic training to enter

Bantik language - Misplaced Pages Continue

2226-679: The oldest generation, often semi-speakers ). UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger categorises 2,473 languages by level of endangerment. Using an alternative scheme of classification, linguist Michael E. Krauss defines languages as "safe" if it is considered that children will probably be speaking them in 100 years; "endangered" if children will probably not be speaking them in 100 years (approximately 60–80% of languages fall into this category) and "moribund" if children are not speaking them now. Many scholars have devised techniques for determining whether languages are endangered. One of

2279-450: The perceived prestige of certain languages. The ultimate result is the loss of linguistic diversity and cultural heritage within affected communities. The general consensus is that there are between 6,000 and 7,000 languages currently spoken. Some linguists estimate that between 50% and 90% of them will be severely endangered or dead by the year 2100. The 20 most common languages , each with more than 50 million speakers, are spoken by 50% of

2332-661: The social structure of one's community is often reflected through speech and language behavior. This pattern is even more prominent in dialects. This may in turn affect the sense of identity of the individual and the community as a whole, producing a weakened social cohesion as their values and traditions are replaced with new ones. This is sometimes characterized as anomie . Losing a language may also have political consequences as some countries confer different political statuses or privileges on minority ethnic groups, often defining ethnicity in terms of language. In turn, communities that lose their language may also lose political legitimacy as

2385-502: The speakers. However, some linguists, such as the phonetician Peter Ladefoged , have argued that language death is a natural part of the process of human cultural development, and that languages die because communities stop speaking them for their own reasons. Ladefoged argued that linguists should simply document and describe languages scientifically, but not seek to interfere with the processes of language loss. A similar view has been argued at length by linguist Salikoko Mufwene , who sees

2438-562: The students at the first summer institute in its second year, 1935, Kenneth Lee Pike (1912–2000), would become the foremost figure in the history of SIL. He served as SIL's president from 1942 to 1979, then as president emeritus until his death in 2000. The Mexican branch, Instituto Lingüístico de Verano , was established in 1948. In 2016, Michel Kenmogne from Cameroon became president. In 2023 SIL said it had 1,350 language projects in 98 countries and 4,200 staff from 84 countries. SIL's principal contribution to linguistics has been

2491-457: The world is not known, and it is not well defined what constitutes a separate language as opposed to a dialect. Estimates vary depending on the extent and means of the research undertaken, and the definition of a distinct language and the current state of knowledge of remote and isolated language communities. The number of known languages varies over time as some of them become extinct and others are newly discovered. An accurate number of languages in

2544-418: The world was not yet known until the use of universal, systematic surveys in the later half of the twentieth century. The majority of linguists in the early twentieth century refrained from making estimates. Before then, estimates were frequently the product of guesswork and very low. One of the most active research agencies is SIL International , which maintains a database, Ethnologue , kept up to date by

2597-438: The world's population, but most languages are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people. The first step towards language death is potential endangerment . This is when a language faces strong external pressure, but there are still communities of speakers who pass the language to their children. The second stage is endangerment . Once a language has reached the endangerment stage, there are only a few speakers left and children are, for

2650-413: The world, many countries have enacted specific legislation aimed at protecting and stabilizing the language of indigenous speech communities . Recognizing that most of the world's endangered languages are unlikely to be revitalized, many linguists are also working on documenting the thousands of languages of the world about which little or nothing is known. The total number of contemporary languages in

2703-547: Was also expelled from Brazil , Mexico , and Panama , and restricted in Colombia and Peru . The organization's focus on language description, language development and Bible translation, and the missionary activities carried out by many of its field workers have been criticized by linguists and anthropologists who argue that SIL aims to change indigenous cultures, which exacerbates the problems that cause language endangerment and language death . Linguists have argued that

SECTION 50

#1732772315686

2756-664: Was officially terminated by the Mexican government after critiques from anthropologists regarding the combination of education and missionary activities in indigenous communities, though SIL continued to be active in that country. At a conference of the Inter-American Indian Institute in Mérida, Yucatán , in November 1980, delegates denounced the Summer Institute of Linguistics, charging that it

2809-518: Was using a scientific name to conceal its Protestant agenda and an alleged capitalist view that was alien to indigenous traditions. This led to the agreement with the Ecuadoran government being terminated in 1980, although a token presence remained. In the early 1990s, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) demanded the expulsion of SIL from the country. SIL

#685314