How Do You Preserve An Endangered Language?

Short Wave

NPR

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4.7 • 6.5K Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2024

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

By the end of the century, more than 40% of the world's estimated 7,000 languages are in danger of disappearing. Those include indigenous languages in the Amazon. The United Nations also estimates that an Indigenous language dies every two weeks. Today, we focus on two endangered languages spoken in the Vaupés region of northwest Amazonia: Desano and Siriano. Linguist Wilson de Lima Silva at the University of Arizona has been working with the community for a decade in an effort to document the language for future generations.

Check out the book Global Language Justice, co-edited by Professor Lydia Liu.

Editor's note: We have updated the headline to more accurately reflect the liguists' efforts.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You might have heard this song on TikTok blow up this summer.
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0:18.6	To find out, listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast from NPR.
0:24.4	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:31.4	Across the world, the places with the greatest biodiversity are also the places with the greatest
0:36.9	language diversity.
0:38.8	Researchers don't fully know why, but it's a phenomenon seen again and again, in the
0:43.3	Amazon and in the Pacific Islands.
0:45.1	For instance, Pablo New Guinea is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world,
0:53.7	and it is also the most linguistically diverse
0:58.5	places in the world. This is Dr. Lydia Liu, a professor at Columbia University and co-editor
1:05.2	of a book called Global Language Justice, which calls attention to the fact that in a time of mass extinction and
1:12.8	climate change, we are also living in a time of rapid language loss.
1:16.9	Why is that a loss?
1:18.5	Well, different people will give different answers.
1:21.3	There's the human reason, of course.
1:24.2	People are attached to their languages emotionally.
1:29.3	They attach to their families and to their community.
1:33.3	So the human element here specifically involves people's breaths, right?
	...

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