Saving Endangered Languages

(Speaking Wakhi) For each person
it' s important

to preserve his or her own language.

Because nowadays we are not able
to speak our language purely.

(Speaking Mustang (Loke)
Now that I've been here

for almost ten years

I can say it depends on us,

on our ability to guide our children
to speak our own language,

our ability to make them aware

of the importance
of their own language and culture

The Endangered Language Alliance
is a nonprofit organization

based here in New York City
and we work primarily

with immigrant communities here
who speak endangered languages.

(Music)

There's many, many communities now,
especially over the last 20, 30 years,

who have come to New York

and have brought their own language

that is being lost back home.

We work with them
to document those languages

and to also promote those languages

and to try and better understand
how those languages are surviving

and what their life,
the life of those languages,

here in New York City.

And we try and educate the public as well,
about the value of linguistic diversity

and what language endangerment is.

(Group reciting)

In language we navigate the possibilities
we create with one another.

And so if we respect the language we have,

we respect ancestral mediums
and knowledge that come through us.

The way this kind of started from a class
that I taught in CUNY nine years ago

where I would bring students
from the Graduate Center around the city

to work on fieldwork projects
with endangered languages.

When I saw that there wa great interest
n the part of the students

and there was great interest,
more importantly,

on the part of the community
and individuals,

that was kind of what gave me
a feeling that it could work.

That these are groups
that need to be brought together.

You have communities
speaking endangered languages,

you have linguists, you have other people

who want to volunteer to helping promote
and understand these languages.

I was lucky that I actually went to CUNY.

This is linguistically, culturally,
ethnic, why this is diverse,

and you can meet many people
there and then learn from them.

If they want to work on a language
they have their resources inside.

They have students from Croatia,

there's students from India,

there's students
from all parts of the world.

(Boat horn)

New York is really a unique place.

We get immigration from all parts
of the world almost equally

and there's very few cities
in the world that can say that.

We have a very large
and diverse African community,

a very large and diverse
Himalayan community, Filipino community,

European communities.

So in that sense I feel
that New York City is definitely

the most linguistically and ethnically
diverse city in the world.

The endangered language Alliance helped
produce this language map of Queens,

an anecdotal language map of Queens

for a book called Nonstop Metropolis

by Rebecca Solnit
and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro.

It's filled with fascinating
different atlases

looking at
all different aspects of the city.

Queens because it's known
for its linguistic diversity.

The zip code around Jackson Heights

is the most linguistically diverse
zip code in all of the United States.

And so this map focuses particularly
on Queens and its languages.

We plotted out the languages that were
represented in the library system,

so kind of
the official national languages,

in one color.

And within those communities
all of the unofficial languages,

the regional languages, local languages,
that are, in many cases,

not even recognized
as official languages back home

and those are the languages
that are endangered

and that's we're more interested in.

(Speaking Tok misin)
My mother tongue is Tawala.

I have forgotten
a little bit of the language

because I'm here in New York.

Only two people know the language;

me and my mother.

By the end of the century
we'll lose somewhere between

half to ninety percent
of the world's languages.

You can only imagine what else
we'll lose with those languages, right?

Not just the words and
the grammatical systems

but also everything
that was transmitted in those languages.

The songs, the histories, the proverbs,
the knowledge about the environment

the knowledge about how peoples were
historically related to each other.

(Music)

You can say: "Okay,languages come and go,

It doesn't... It is not a big deal,"

but it is big deal when it is dying
and we are not doing anything about it.

You know, when all
you can speak is English

or Spanish or Chinese, then...

That can be, in fact,
a reminder that you've lost what's yours

and something foreign has been forced
upon you and you live that every day.

When we think about the riches
of our own languages,

whatever language that is,

we should imagine that those riches
are duplicated 6,000 times

in every language

and to lose that is like losing a museum,
as one famous linguist said.

Recording language creates
a permanent record if it, right,

so now especially in the digital age
a recording is actually much more valuable

and easier to work with I would say.

The linguistic record optimally should be
something that's multi-purpose.

So it's good for linguists trying
to study the language,

it's also good for speakers
trying to revive the language perhaps,

it's good for trying to understand
the oral literature, the stories,

and other aspects that maybe
we're not even thinking about today

but that may be very valuable
to look back on in 50 or 100 years.

(Singing)

Active archiving always has to take
into account the different players,

the different...

and especially the community
from which it comes from.

Not to kind of take it away from them
and put it in some digital vault

but rather think of it
as a way of facilitating

the community's access to the language.

If you are in a country
where English is a dominant language

you need to learn it, but nobody will say:
"Human being can only speak one language,

they cannot handle two languages".

Yes, they can.

If you go to Europe or you come to India,

people speak three languages
or four languages.

It's just the perspective.

Change the perspective and you can have
a multilingual America and a happier one.