New language evolves in Australian Outback

An article published on the IFLScience website documents a new language spoken by just 350 people in Austrlia's Northern Territory.

The language, called Light Warlpiri, combines elements of Warlpiri, Kriol, and Standard Australian English. It was first reported in 2005 and is thought to have surfaced during the 1970s and 1980s.

In an age where many languages are in danger of becoming extinct (including Warlpiri), it's heartening to learn of a new language arising in a remote community, some 68 miles from its nearest neighbour, and 350 miles from the closest town.

African scripts

After a long absence, even by my standards, I saw an article in Aeon about African scripts that is so relevant to Lingo that I just had to revisit this blog to include it.

Written by D Vance Smith, the essay looks mainly at the Lybico-Berber script, which, the author argues, puts to bed the myth that pre-colonial Africans were not literate. The script, which is no longer used and has never been completely deciphered, is also called Numidian and Old Libyan and has recently become the official script of the Amazigh movement in the Maghreb. This was the subject of an earlier post on this very blog, so it's nice to revisit the subject with some more in-depth analysis. 

We're back, with the proto-Elamites

It's been a long time since I updated this blog - lack of time and a multitude of other priorities, along with an abysmal memory and lack of willpower - however this piece on the BBC about the world's oldest-known undeciphered writing was tailor-made for Lingo, so I felt impelled to feature it.







The writing system, called proto-Elamite, is approximately 5,000 years old and originates from a region in the south west of modern Iran. Experts believe that it flourished only briefly and possibly died out because of a lack of scholarship in the civilisation in which it evolved, meaning it was difficult for contemporaries to learn (and hence modern linguists to translate) and it became easily corrupted and thereby useless.

It is believed that the proto-Elamites (they must surely have given themselves a catchier name) borrowed the idea of writing from the Mesopotamians, but used totally different symbols.

Dr Jacob Dahl, of Wolfson College, Oxford (where else!) has asked the general public to help the experts decipher the alphabet.

Here today, gone tomorrow?

A report in The Pioneer suggests that the discovery of a new language in Arunachel Pradesh might not be such a brilliant thing after all. The problem is that the new language, called Koro, is spoken by less than a thousand people and is in danger of imminent extinction. The language was discovered by the National Geographic Enduring Voices project, which strives to preserve endangered languages by identifying language hotspots and documenting the languages and cultures within them.

It's always exciting to discover a new language (see previous post - Lost language found), especially one that is still extant but suitably obscure, although it is important to make a record of it before it disappears; especially so for those that are purely spoken languages. Koro is a Tibeto-Burman language (related to Tibetan and Burmese), and was discovered while researchers were studying two other languages from this little-known region: Aka and Miji.

What is particularly unusual about the Koro speakers is that they live as a sub-group of the Aka tribe, but their languages have almost nothing in common. It is very rare for separate languages to co-exist among integrated groups where there is no acknowledged ethnic difference. Because of an absence of written records it is going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to determine how and when the Koro speakers became attached to the Aka speakers, and what therefore is the prognosis for their language.

Lost language found

A report in American Anthologist (behind a paywall) documents the discovery of a letter in the ruins of a church near Trujillo in northern Peru. The significance of the letter is that on the reverse it has a list of numbers in Spanish, and alongside them a translation into an unknown language. The language appears to be similar to Quechua, an old language that is still spoken in the Andes, and scholars have speculated that it could be either Quingnam or Pescadora. Both are now extinct languages, possibly even the same language, and the latter was spoken by fisherman (hence the name, presumably) on the northern coast of Peru. The letter is thought to be about 400 years old

This is just one of many languages spoken in the region before the Spanish (and French and Dutch and English and Portuguese) colonised the area, leading to the eradication of much local culture (and people, come to that). Most of these languages were never written, and therefore have been lost to us forever, unless there are more hidden pieces of paper lying around in abandoned buildings. Our breath remains unheld.

Not Norn Iron, but Northern Scotland

At the weekend the BBC broadcast a programme about the dialect used in the Shetland Islands, derived from the extinct language Norn. Many words still used on the islands are Norn words, which speakers mix effortlessly with English. Although the dialect appears to be thriving, a group called Shetland ForWirds has been formed with the aim of keeping the dialect extant.

Sorry for the lack of updates, and for such a short post this time. Normal service will, with a bit of luck, be resumed once the kids return to school next week.

Hang on for Hangeul

There is an interesting article in the Korean Times about the origins of Hangeul, the script in which Korean is written. Korean evolved from Classical Chinese, and in the early centuries it was written using Chinese characters. But, because written Chinese was so difficult to learn, Hangeul was invented during the 15th Century. However, like all innovations, it took a while to catch on and initially it wasn't used for serious texts. In fact, it wasn't until the final decade of the 19th Century that the use of Hangeul became widespread in Korea.

Major languages under threat?

Two recent news items have been published about locals fearing for the futures of their language as a result of the rapid spread of stronger languages. Indonesians are worried that the spread of English is having a negative affect on Bahasa Indonesia, according to The New York Times. Part of the problem is that new wealth is leading to an increase in middle-class families who send their children to private schools where lessons are taught in English, as opposed to the state schools where Indonesian is the main language and the quality of English teaching is poor. The reason for this is that the ability to speak English is something of a status symbol. Indonesia is a large country where many local languages and dialects are spoken, and the official language of Bahasa Indonesia is considered essential to maintain some sort of unity. The undermining of the official language is of great concern, therefore, to the government.

Meanwhile, the Montreal Gazette informs us that in Guangzhou, Cantonese is facing a threat from Mandarin. This comes after local officials proposed that Mandarin, called Putonghua locally, become more widespread because it is the country's main language and speakers of it often find Cantonese incomprehensible. Cantonese is unlikely to die out anytime soon, there being 70 million speakers around the world, and there are about seven millions, or 50 per cent of the population, who speak it in Guangzhou. However, this pales into insignificance when you consider that Putonghua is spoken by an estimated 900 million people. Some Cantonese speakers in Guangzhou claim that there is a deliberate attempt to suppress their language in favour of Putonghua, although this is naturally denied by government officials.

Undecipherable language of Easter Island

Helium is a rather excellent web site where budding (and established) writers can self-publish articles on a variety of different subjects. Today the site has published an interesting article about Rongorongo, a glyph language believed to belong to the Rapa Nui people and that has remained largely undeciphered.

Rongorongo is interesting because it is a language that appears to have no known origins, and is apparently unrelated to any other known language. It has been speculated that the language and script was invented on the island, based on the influence of the early Spanish explorers who landed on Easter Island in the 1770s (some 50 years after the Dutch became the first Europeans to discover it). This is supported by the evidence of the earliest known examples of Rongorongo, which are post-1680.

Today the islanders speak mostly Spanish and write in the Latin script, and Rongorongo is no longer spoken or written. The small amounts of the language that have been deciphered relate largely to calendars and rituals, while the strange semantics and the lack of knowledge as to what the glyphs represent have hindered researchers. In the 1950s Thomas Barthel made an inventory of the script, which consists of 120 main symbols and between 1200 and 2000 compound glyphs.

Although Rongorongo isn't officially designated as a language, as researchers manage to decipher more of the script it is getting closer to being recognised as such.

Dictionary reprinted 149 years later

Kannada is the language of Bangalore in India. In 1861 the Reverend Etienne Louis Charbonnaux compiled a dictionary for translating Latin into Kannada, called Dictionarium Latino-Canarense, building on an earlier Kannada-Latin dictionary (Dictionarium Canarense-Latinum) produced six years earlier by Jean-Marie Auguste Bouteloup. Now, 149 years after the Reverend Charbonnaux's dictionary was first produced (it currently resides in St. Mary's Basilica in Bangalore), it has been reprinted by Akhila Karnataka Catholic Christara Kannada Sangha, and will be released in August.

The report, in The Hindu (link updated, behind a paywall), says that the compilers of the dictionaries didn't have their names printed, but that the editorial board of the reprint managed to deduce who they were from church records. The dictionaries were produced at a time before local languages replaced Latin as the language of liturgy, and they are important for students of theology, language and history. Unfortunately, the reprints are not second editions, but rather reproductions of the originals, with their hard-to-read fonts and archaic language. It is possible that the lexicons, recently discovered in the archives of St. Mary's Basilica, the oldest church in Bangalore, may be updated in the future.

Going native

There is some good news concerning minority languages, as reported in Indian Country Today, which publishes articles relevant to the Indigenous people of the Americas. A group of Indian educators claim that native languages are alive and well, but they need Federal support in order to help them to flourish.

The international charity Cultural Survival recently reported that "unless dramatic action is taken now, more than 70 Native American languages will become extinct within the next 10 years". The group called for a White House initiative to revitalise native languages, with many Congress members finding their arguments compelling. However, whatever acts Congress may pass, the root of the problem remains finding sufficient funding for them to be implemented, with as much as $5 million possibly required to help schools provide the necessary resources. Small beer when compared to the money spent on far less important government initiatives.

Igbo to go?

The Nigerian newspaper Next reveals today that a UNESCO report has claimed that the Igbo language could die out in the next 50 years. Chukwuemeka Wogu, the Minister of Labour and Productivity, blamed Igbo parents for not talking to their children in their native tongue. A group called 'Ndi Igbo' is attempting to reverse the decline, and Mr Wogu has called upon speakers of other languages in Nigeria to emulate them in an attempt to prevent other native tongues from going extinct. If they fail, President Goodluck Jonathan may have to consider a name change.