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The Last Word
Can the world's small languages be saved?
Shorris, Earl Publisher: Harper's Magazine
Year Published: 2000
Resource Type: Article
On the disappearance of languages in the modern globalized world and the efforts of academics to preserve them.
Abstract:
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Excerpt:
Anthropologists and, until quite recently, most linguists have been content to embalm the dead, preparing languages for the file cabinet and the museum. This killing of a language happens exactly as one would expect: the weak must speak to the strong in the language of the strong. Eventually, the langauge of the weak loses utility, except for secrets and the making of ill-fated rebellions. The Eyak dell into silence in the old way, caught between two larger nations on the south coast of Alaska, crushed to a whisper, until the whites came and reduced the Eyak to a single speaker. The Darwinian way of the world bears some responsiblity, globalization does the rest: movies, television, Reeboks, and the Internet, The single most prominent feature of the landscape of the Yup'ik poor, as in the homes of all the poor in the United States, the televison set plays during all waking hours.
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