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Europe is the poorest in languages | ||
Tags: Europe | Number of Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| researcher Newbie Nepal Joined 4857 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English | Message 1 of 20 22 March 2011 at 3:05pm | IP Logged |
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http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Skutnabb-KangasEN .pdf
If we discount recent immigrants and count only the autochthonous languages, we have only some 3% of the world's spoken languages. North, Central and South America have around 1,000 autochthonous spoken languages, 15%. Africa has around 30%, Asia a bit over 30% and the Pacific somewhat under 20% (see Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000 for details). A count based on Sign languages would probably give a similar distribution1. Two countries, Papua New Guinea with over 850 languages and Indonesia with around 670, have together a quarter of the world's languages. Adding those seven countries which have more than 200 languages each (Nigeria 410, India 380, Cameroon 270, Australia 250, Mexico 240, Zaire 210, Brazil 210), we get up to almost 3.500 languages, i.e. 9 countries have more than half of the world's spoken languages. With the next 13 countries, those with more than 100 languages each (the Philippines, Russia, USA, Malaysia, China, Sudan, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Chad, Vanuatu, The Central African Republic, Myanmar/Burma and Nepal), 22 mega-diversity countries (some 10 percent of the world's countries) have around 75% of the world's languages (and only one of them is in Europe if Russia is counted as a European country). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6451 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 2 of 20 22 March 2011 at 5:01pm | IP Logged |
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Perhaps it's worthwhile to remember that Europe accounts for only about 12% of the world's population.
Geography probably accounts for the Pacific having such a large share of the world's languages; people who live on remote islands are less likely to share a language with their closest neighbors because those neighbors may still be very far away. Papua New Guinea is a rugged, mountainous country with lots of islands. Wikipedia claims that this terrain makes it difficult for the country to develop a transportation infrastructure, so it is easier for small, local languages to survive. Many European languages are among the most studied languages in the world: French, English, Spanish, German and Italian come to mind. It's tougher for languages with smaller numbers of speakers and comparatively little material available in those languages (books, Web sites, movies, television, etc.) to compete and survive in such an environment. Statistics can be deceptive. Brazil may indeed have 210 languages, but Wikipedia claims that eighty of them are Amerindian languages while most of the rest (other than Portuguese) are spoken by immigrants. The article also says that the vast majority of people in Brazil speak only Portuguese. Europe may be poor in terms of the sheer number of languages spoken, but it is rich in terms of how those languages have spread around the world. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6495 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 20 23 March 2011 at 12:17am | IP Logged |
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Europe may have fewer languages than Indonesia or New Guinea, but in those languages we have got we produce books, magazines, TV programs and courses. Most of the languages on the island New Guinea are virtually unknown outside one narrow valley, and there are no written sources or media which people people outside that valley can use for their studies. In that situation I would say that our language situation in Europe is better for language learners: fewer languages, but you can access those we have got. Edited by Iversen on 23 March 2011 at 10:02am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| FrostBlast Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4891 days ago 168 posts - 254 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Icelandic | Message 4 of 20 23 March 2011 at 12:59am | IP Logged |
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That's a simple result of empires growing, exchanging, doing commerce, going to war, etc. Across the centuries, the big guys will eat up the small ones. Europe probably had a much larger number of languages back before the roman conquests and earlier still - they simply disappeared.
If even a language as important as Latin can die out, I don't think anyone can say they know what will happen with those in use today. Edited by FrostBlast on 23 March 2011 at 12:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| researcher Newbie Nepal Joined 4857 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English | Message 5 of 20 23 March 2011 at 10:13am | IP Logged |
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http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Skutnabb-KangasEN .pdf
continues saying that: Linguistic and cultural diversity on the one hand and biodiversity on the other hand are correlated - where one type is high, the other one is usually too, and vice versa,even if there are exceptions. Comparing the top 25 countries in terms of the number of endemic languages and the number of endemic vertebrates, conservationist David Harmon (1995) finds a high degree of overlap: 16 of the 25 top countries are on both lists. He has the same result when comparing languages and flowering plants,languages and butterflies, etc - there is a high correlation between various kinds of indicators of biological mega-diversity and rich linguistic diversity (Harmon, in press). New research suggests mounting evidence for the hypothesis that the relationship might also be causal: the two types of diversities seem to mutually enforce and support each other (Maffi, 2001; Posey, 1999). It is not only the biological species and languages that disappear. With death of languages, also the "traditional ecological knowledge about relationships between plants and animals is being lost" (Nabhan 2001: 151). Indigenous and minority communities are "reservoirs of considerable knowledge about rare, threatened, and endemic species that has not to date been independently accumulated by Western-trained conservation biologists", says Nabhan (2001: 151), summarizing a wealth of studies. This knowledge which is encoded in the many indigenous and minority languages, can be used both to "promote sustainable use of land and natural resources" (Nations 2001: 470) and to "help guide the identification, management, protection, or recovery of habitats" (Nabhan 2001: 151) for threatened species. These "conservation traditions, expressed in native languages, are what Hazel Henderson called 'the cultural DNA' that can help us create sustainable economies in healthy ecosystems on this, the only planet we have" (Gell-Mann, quoted in Nations 2001: 470). If the long-lasting coevolution which people have had with their environments since time immemorial is abruptly disrupted (as we are doing today), without nature (and people) having enough time to adjust and adapt, we are also seriously undermining our chances of life on earth (see Terralingua's web-site http://www.terralingua.org). Evolution has been aided by diversity. The strongest and most stable ecosystems are those which are the most diverse. Diversity contains the potential for adaptation whereas uniformity can endanger a species (including the human species) by providing inflexibility and unadaptability, (Baker, 2001: 281). Baker argues that "Our success on this planet has been due to an ability to adapt to different kinds of environment over thousands of years (atmospheric [e.g. the Ice Age] as well as cultural. Such ability is born out of diversity. Thus language and cultural diversity maximises chances of human success and adaptability" (ibid.). "Just as in biology, diversity is the norm. So it is with language: multilingualism is the norm" (St. Clair 2001: 102). Nigeria with its over 400 languages, is more linguistically diverse than the whole of Europe, regardless of how we define Europe (even with a maximum definition of "Europe" the number of languages is under 300). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Meelämmchen Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4875 days ago 214 posts - 249 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 6 of 20 23 March 2011 at 2:09pm | IP Logged |
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I think there is no causal relation. I remember that I have heard that Europe had traditionally a quite low bio diversity and that it even with cultivation of nature in medieval times and the parallel centralization of languages has gone up, but I'm not sure on this one. Also, how can Sudan have such a low bio diversity and 142 languages? Why, on the other hand, can Egypt have pretty much an identical low level bio diversity and have only 5 languages or something like this? It's much more the fundamentals of the eco system which define the level of bio diversity.
Well yes, native inhabitants know their land best, but it has nothing to do that they speak in Nigeria 400 languages, it's only because they are not or can not going for big agriculture for the global market. Also, English speaking scientists could help identifying the bio diversity and making it used sustainable "on this, the only planet we have" (Gell-Mann), with only one language, with hard science and nothing like English-scientific DNA. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| researcher Newbie Nepal Joined 4857 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English | Message 7 of 20 23 March 2011 at 2:32pm | IP Logged |
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[QUOTE=Meelämmchen]it has nothing to do that they speak in Nigeria 400 languages, QUOTE]
Honestly when I read it once more I realized that I couldn’t understand what the text was saying. First of all, what the language here means should be dialects. Then how can the US or China has more than 100 languages? And by the way Nigeria has deserts. So how and why do they have over languages? Like you said also there is no scientific causal relationship. On the other hand the Arabs spoke countless dialects. So why do they still live in deserts with few plants and animals? There is one thing which is not mentioned in the text. That is that the linguistic and/or cultural diversity correlates with the heterogeneity (biodiversity) of its people. If the country X has more language and/or culture than the country Y then X should be more heterogeneous in every dimension of personality. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Dragonsheep Groupie United States Joined 5062 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Studies: Tagalog, English* Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 8 of 20 23 March 2011 at 8:19pm | IP Logged |
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Less languages may be a sign of development, industraialization and progress.
Socially, hundreds of different languages generally implies social ostracization of groups. There's the classic example of putting two similar families in two different valleys and leaving them separated for hundreds of years. Social isolation of groups means they can't cooperate, codevelop, trade and share resources. The extinction of languages today may be a sign of the effectiveness of globalization and such interconnectivity. Honestly, if Europe had such linguistic diversity, more social isolation between countries would be apparent, nations wouldn't be able to develop cooperatively, etc.\ I really don't think less languages is neccessarily bad. Less languages means more people can communicate and resultantly progress is more possble. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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