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 uniquely 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 so

we have 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 and 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 and

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 that are endangered and that we're
more interested in.

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 that "okay languages come
and go...

it doesn't... like it it's not a big deal"

but it's 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 language—whatever language
that is—

we should imagine that those

riches are duplicated 6,000 times in

every language and to lose that it's

like losing a museum as as one famous
linguist said.

[Music]

Recording language creates a permanent

record leverage right so now especially

in the in the digital age a recording is

actually much 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 linguist strength to study the

language it's also good for speakers

trying to revive the language perhaps

it's good for trying to understand the

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 that English is a

dominant language you need to learn it

but nobody will say that "ok human being

only can speak one language; they cannot

handle two languages".

Yes, they can. If you go to Europe

or you can go to India,

people speak three languages or four
languages.

It's just the perspective, if you

change the perspective and you can have

a multilingual America and a happier one.

[Music]