Re: Article on Elvish, etc.

At 4/21/01 04:13 PM -0700, you wrote:
>On Sat, 21 Apr 2001, Padraic Brown wrote:
>
> > Interesting article! I'd only disagree with the statement that Navajo
> > will be the only native American language to survive the century.
> > Unless 6 million (or so) Quechua speakers disappear in the comming
> > century. There are other Native American languages as well that are
> > fairly strong in numbers.
> >
>
>Even if we only mention North Americans, there are also the Cree, the
>Ojibway and the Haida...
The tribes may be strong, but their languages are dying. To my knowledge,
only Navajo has more than 100,000 speakers left. (Based on looking through
Ethnologue, which I find to have high numbers for the languages I deal with).

The Haida, their languages (Skidegate and Masset) are almost completely
dead already. I recently spoke to an ethnic Haidan who works on native
language preservation. He told me he didn't know of a single fluent speaker
of Haida in the US, but that he knew of a small group in Canada. All of
them old people. He doesn't even work on his ancestoral language anymore,
and doesn't know more than a few words.

I recently spent time talking to Pima speakers on the Salt and Gila River
reservations in Arizona. Use of Pima is described as "vigorous" with more
than 11,000 speakers. I don't know who came to that conclusion, but it is
not my observation of the situation at all. There may be that many speakers
(I have no way of knowing), but they spend half their time speaking in
English -- even with each other. And I never heard a single person under 35
string a sentence together.

Don't be fooled by large numbers in the statistics. In most indian
communities, children are not learning their tribal language; and the
acquisition of the language by children is the only thing that matters. If
the children aren't learning it, the language will die with their parents.

A quote on the matter form reknowned linguists Kenneth Hale and Michael
Krauss (Language, 1992):

"For the whole USA and Canada together... of 187 languages, I calculate
that 149 are no longer being learned by children; that is, of the Native
North American langauges still spoken, 80% are moribund."

Note: "moribund" is more serious than "endangered".



Marcus Smith

"Sit down before fact as a little child,
be prepared to give up every preconceived notion,
follow humbly wherever and to whatsoever abysses Nature leads,
or you shall learn nothing."
                -- Thomas Huxley