Part3

Read the text and answer the questions below.

Save endangered language

“Obviously we must do some serious rethinking of our priorities, lest linguistics go down in history as the only science that presided obviously over the disappearance of 90 percent of the very field to which it is dedicated.” —Michael Krauss, “The World’s Languages in Crisis”.

A Ten years ago Michael Krauss sent a shudder through the discipline of linguistics with his prediction that half the 6,000 or so languages spoken in the world would cease to be uttered within a century. Scientists and community leaders directed a worldwide effort to stabilise the decline of local languages. Since then the threat of the linguistic diversity of humankind would probably be doomed to extinction. Krauss’s prediction was little more than an educated guess after inspecting languages that have changed out of existence. Kenneth L. Hale of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said of the case that some iconic language that died had found its last speaker passed away just recently. He noted that 70 of the 90 surviving Aboriginal languages were no longer used regularly by all age groups. The same was true for all but 20 of the 175 Native American languages spoken or remembered in the US, Krauss told a congressional panel in 1992.

B Many experts in the field cite the loss of rare languages, for several reasons.To start, there is scientific self-interest: some of the most basic questions in linguistics have to do with the limits of human speech, which are far from fully explored.Many researchers would like to know which structural elements of grammar and vocabulary of any are truly universal and probably therefore hard to deduce from the human brain.Other researchers try to reconstruct ancient migration patterns by comparing words that would appear in otherwise unrelated languages such as these often under the umbrella of languages you study are more likely to get to the right answers.

C Despite the near constant buzz in linguistics about endangered languages over the past 10 years the field has accomplished depressingly little.“You would think that there would be some organised response to this dire situation,”some attempt to determine which language can be saved and which should be abandoned before they disappear, says Sarah G. Thomason, a linguist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.“But there isn’t any such effort organised in the profession.It is only recently that it has become fashionable enough to work on endangered languages.”Six years ago, recalls Douglas H. Whalen of Yale University,“when I asked linguists who were raising money to deal with these problems,I mostly got blank stares.”So Whalen and a few other linguists founded the Endangered Languages Fund.In the five years to 2001 they were able to collect only $80,000 for research grants.A similar foundation in England, directed by Nicholas Ostler, has raised just $10,000 since 1995.

D But there are encouraging signs that the field has turned a corner.The Volkswagen Foundation,a German charity,issued its second round of grants,totalling more than $2 million;it has created a multimedia archive at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands that can house recordings,grammars,dictionaries,and other data on endangered languages.To fill the archive,the foundation has dispatched field linguists to document Aweti (100 or so speakers in Brazil),Ega (about 300 speakers in Ivory Coast) and Lavukaleve (no known speakers left in Vanuatu),and a dozen or so other languages to survey the country.The Ford Foundation has also edged into the arena.Its contributions helped to reinvigorate a master-apprentice program created in 1992 by Leanne Hinton of Berkeley and Native Americans who wanted to train teachers of about 50 endangered languages in California.Fifteen speakers received $3,000 to teach a younger relative (in pairs) their native tongue through what is called the master-apprentice program.Hinton admits that the program has accomplished little so far,but she remains optimistic.“We’re trying to prove that language revitalisation is possible.”Hinton adds,“the death rate of elderly speakers will always be greater than the recruitment rate of young speakers.But at least we are prolonging the survival of the language.”That will give linguists more time to record these languages before they vanish.

E But the master-apprentice approach hasn’t caught on outside the US,and Hinton’s effort is a drop in the sea.At least 440 languages have been reduced to a mere handful of elders,according to the Ethnologue,a catalogue of languages produced by the Dallas-based group SIL International that comes closest to global coverage.For the vast majority of these languages,there is little or no record of their grammar,vocabulary,pronunciation or use in daily life.Even if a language has been fully documented,all that remains once it vanishes from active use is a fossil skeleton,a scattering of features that the scientist was lucky and astute enough to capture.Linguists may be able to sketch an outline of the forgotten language and fix its place on the evolutionary tree,but little more.“How did people start conversations and talk to babies?”Hunsberger had asked,and never receive a clear answer.“Those are the first things you want to learn when you want to revitalise the language.”

F But there is as yet no discipline of “conservation linguistics,”as there is for biology.Almost every strategy tried so far has succeeded in some places but failed in others,and there seems to be no way to predict with certainty what will work where.Twenty years ago in New Zealand Maori speakers set up “language nests,”in which preschoolers were immersed in the native language.Additional Maori-only primary and secondary schools followed.A similar approach was also tried in Hawaii,with some success:the number of native speakers has stabilised at 1,000 or so,reports Joseph E. Grimes of SIL International,who is working on Oahu.Students can now get instruction in Hawaiian all the way through university.

G One factor that always occurs in the demise of a language is that the speakers begin to have collective doubts about the usefulness of language loyalty.Once they start regarding their own language as inferior to the majority language people stop using it for all but ceremonial tasks.On the Attenborough island the diminishing language may be spoken at home and they rarely realise that their kids never speak the language,even at home.This is how Cornish and dialects of Scottish Gaelic is still only rarely used for daily life in Ireland 180 years after the republic was founded with Irish as its first official language.

H Linguists argue that ultimately,the answer to the problem of language extinction is multilingualism.Even uneducated people can learn several languages,as long as they start as children.Indeed most people in the world speak more than one tongue,and in places such as Cameroon (279 languages),Papua New Guinea (823) and India (287) it is common to speak three or four distinct languages and a dialect or two as well.Most Americans and Canadians in the west of Quebec,have got a gut reaction that anyone speaking another language in front of them is committing an immoral act.You get the same reaction in Australia and Russia.It is no coincidence that these are the areas where languages are disappearing the fastest.The first step in saving dying languages is to persuade the world’s majority to allow the minorities among them to speak with their own voices.

Questions 27–33

The reading passage has eight paragraphs, A-I. Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-I from the list below. Write the correct number in boxes 27–33 on your answer sheet.

List of headings

data consistency needed for language

consensus on an initiative recommendation for saving dying out languages

positive gains for protection

minimum requirement for saving a language

potential threat to minority language

value of minarity language to linguists

native language program launched

subjective doubts as a negative factor

practise in several developing countries

value of minarity language to linguists

government participation in language field

Questions 34–38

Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-F) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-F in boxes 34–38 on your answer sheet.

A Nicholas Ostler B Michael Krauss C Joseph E. Grimes D Sarah G. Thomason E Kenneth L. Hale F Douglas H. Whalen

Reported language conservation practice in Hawaii
Predicted that many languages would disappear soon
Experienced languages die out personally
Raised language fund in England
Not enough effort on saving and ancient work

Questions 39–40

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answers in boxes 39–40 on your answer sheet.

39 What is purpose of master-apprentice program sponsored by The Ford Foundation? A Teach children how to speak B Revive endangered language C Preserve endangered language D Increase communication between students

40 What should majority language speaker should do according to the last paragraph?

A They should teach their children endangered language.

B They should learn at least four languages.

C They should show their loyalty to a dying language.

D They should be more tolerant to minority language speaker.