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[Last installed/updated: 13 April 1992]
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TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

Subject: UNESCO and CIPSH Project on Endangered Languages in the World


A very major world-wide project has recently been launched by UNESCO, with strong involvement of the International Council of Philosophy and Humanities Studies (CIPSH) which is affiliated with UNESCO, and several of the large international scholarly organisations which are the constituent organisations of CIPSH, in particular the Permanent International Committee of Linguists (CIPL) and the Union Academique Internationale (UAI).

For a number of years, UNESCO has been actively involved in programs dealing with endangered animal and plant species, endangered ecologies and environments, and also endangered cultures. However, endangered languages have hitherto not been taken into account by UNESCO. This has now changed radically, and UNESCO and CIPSH have initiated the program which is referred to in the first paragraph of this letter.

This has been in recognition of the alarming fact that 60-70% i.e. 3500 to 4000, of all the languages of the world are endangered and have no children speakers any more. UNESCO also realises that it is widely recognised by linguists and others concerned with these particular matters that human language has as its main function that of constructing realities as envisaged by its speakers, not of just labelling a pre-existing reality. In the light of this, everyone of the close to six thousand human languages constitutes a record of how its speakers have struggled to arrive at a world view and a special system of knowledge and philosophy, unique to themselves. Many of these systems contain linguistic, philosophical and conceptual solutions to problems that have not yet been resolved in the metropolitan societies and languages. Therefore the loss of any one language constitutes an irretrievable loss to human knowledge and our understanding of the world around us.

As the first step of UNESCO's program, a 5 day meeting on endangered languages of eight world authorities was arranged by UNESCO and CIPSH at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris from 10-14 February this year, with two senior officials (one of them an expert on endangered languages) of the sector of culture of UNESCO attending along with senior CIPSH and CIPL officials. The eight experts referred to included persons who at the same time were senior UAI representatives. These eight experts were (with their home institutions, field of specialisation in endangered languages, and other information).

Stephen A.Wurm (Convenor and Chair, Australian National University; Pacific, China, Asian part of the former USSR, Arctic areas, endangered languages in general; President of CIPSH, Immediate Past President and member of Council of UAI) .

E.M. Uhlenbeck (Leiden University; Indonesia and endangered languages in general; Secretary General of CIPL, editor of a recent CIPSH book on endangered languages).

R. Ris (Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich and Bern University; Europe, parts of Asia, endangered languages in general; Vice President of CIPSH, Vice President and member of Council of UAI).

Shigeru Tsuchida (University of Tokyo; Taiwan, Philippines and adjacent areas, endangered languages in general; advisor to the Japanese Ministry of Education, envisaged director of the planned World Clearinghouse and Databank Centre for the UNESCO-CIPSH endangered languages project).

Michael Krauss (University of Alaska; Arctic areas, North America, Siberia, endangered languages in general; Director of Alaska Native Languages Center).

Peter Muhlhausler (Oxford University and University of Adelaide; Pacific, East Asia, Southeast Asia with specialisation in pidgin and creole languages and language contacts and influences, ecology of language, endangered languages in general; co-editor of and collaborator in the Australian Academy of the Humanities -UAI-CIPSH Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific Hemisphere project).

Wilem Adelaar (Leiden University; South America, Central America and Mexico, endangered languages in general; co-author of Cambridge University Press Book on Andean Languages, including endangered ones, collaborator in the AAH-UAI-CIPSH Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific Area project).

Bernd Heine (University of Cologne; Africa, endangered languages in general; co-editor and co-author of a Language Atlas of Africa to be published by Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin; Director of the Institute of African Languages of the University of Cologne).

UNESCO and CIPSH officials at the meeting:

Dimitri Koundiouba (Division of Cultural Studies and Policies of UNESCO; former USSR).

Noriko Aikawa (Section of Cultural Exchanges of Unesco: Senior UNESCO representative at the meeting).

Jean d'Ormesson (General Secretary of CIPSH).

Anneliese Gaborieau (Deputy General Secretary of CIPSH).

The discussion touched upon the following questions:

(1) The recording and description, in the form of grammars, dictionaries, texts and collections of oral literature, of languages close to extinction which have not been studied at all to date, or only very little.

(2) The question of the maintenance and preservation of endangered languages which were still viable, but had no children speakers any more, and whose speakers were desirous of preserving and maintaining their languages and were actively seeking help to this end.

(3) The question of impressing upon governments, authorities, bureaucracies and the general public in individual countries, the use and advantages of the maintenance of minority languages which constitute an important basis for the self-respect and cultural identification of their speakers. It was pointed out, on the basis of experience in North and South American countries and elsewhere, that it was much cheaper for governments and authorities to spend money on language maintenance (and culture maintenance associated with it) than to care for human derelicts who had lost their language and culture and had turned to drink, crime and drugs, with a disproportionate number of them spending much of their lives in prison, at very high cost to governments. This is an argument which seems to be understood remarkably quickly by governments and authorities, as experiences with Amerindians and Arctic peoples have shown.

(4) The question of training personnel for the tasks mentioned under 2 and 3 above was also on the agenda.

It was decided to concentrate first on point (1) in view of resistance to points (2) and (3) to be still expected from some member countries of UNESCO who are afraid of separatist movements in their countries and regard interest in the maintenance of minority languages as an encouragement of such separatist intentions. In the light of the present major changes in world politics and the cessation of the vying for political influence in given parts of the world by the former Eastern Block and the USA, and the resulting severe drop in the political significance of such areas and of their influence at UNESCO, it is to be expected that such resistance to language maintenance in such areas will soon soften. This may allow language maintenance programs to be adopted by UNESCO in the foreseeable future.

While UNESCO is already planning to include the study of several hitherto unstudied languages in its program over the next ten years, it was decided that an important prerequisite for the whole endangered languages program would be the establishment of an updatable Red Book of the endangered languages of the world giving, for each language, important demographic data such as the number of the remaining speakers of the individual endangered languages, also in terms of their percentage of the original total speech community (e.g. 8% of the tribe or community still have a knowledge of their original language), the age of the youngest speakers, the preponderance of men or women amongst the remaining speakers (e.g. many dying South American languages have only female speakers) etc. Also information on the competence of the "speakers" - is it full mastery, limited
mastery, partial or fragmentary knowledge etc. It is also important to indicate what information exists on the languages, who may have worked or may be willing to work in them, which institutions have been or could be involved in studying them, etc. Also, information on the sociolinguistic situation of the languages, i.e. which other language or languages are a threat to them, what is happening to the culture of their speakers, what is the attitude of the remaining speakers to their language, etc, is essential.

To start off work on this large Red Book project, UNESCO is taking steps to contract one major linguistic organisation concerned with the study of endangered languages in each of the continental areas of North America, Latin America (including Mexico), Africa, Europe, Asia and the Pacific World, with a view to the collection of extant information of the kind mentioned above. For the Pacific area and parts of Asia, the Department of Linguistics in the RSPacS of the ANU, in collaboration with Canberra-based institutions such as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) and other Australian Universities, has been chosen. Each of the continents has a continental coordinator of the work, with me responsible for the Pacific and parts of Asia, and I have also been given the task of world coordinator of the project, in collaboration with the other continental coordinators whom I all know well and with whom I have collaborated in other projects for many years. At the same time, UNESCO has taken steps to establish a world clearing house and databank centre in Tokyo which is to fulfil the task of filing and processing all the information becoming available under the Red Book project and making it available to anyone in the world through electronic mail on the screen and in hard copy form, through fax and other means. This clearing house should also store all other information on endangered languages such as studies of them, etc, to be available from the centre world-wide. The clearing house is planned to be under the directorship of the outstanding Japanese linguist Professor Shigeru Tsuchida (who was twice visiting professor in the Department of Linguistics, RSPacS, ANU) who is himself an expert on endangered languages in Taiwan and adjacent areas and was a collaborator in the Language Atlas of the Pacific Area project of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He was one of the eight world experts taking part in the Paris meeting. The clearing house centre which is to contain the most advanced electronic equipment and expert staff and is envisaged to be financed by the Japanese Government and other grant-giving agencies in Japan including the Japan Academy, is hoped to start operations in April 1993, at the beginning of the Japanese fiscal year. The establishment of additional small local clearing houses in the various continents is envisaged for a later date.

This great UNESCO and CIPSH project was greeted with enthusiasm by agencies concerned with endangered languages and vanishing features of our world in general. Interest and offers of moral support for the project were forthcoming of such agencies, and from several academies which were members of the UAI. The whole situation of endangered languages will be further looked at in detail at the XVth International Congress of Linguistics in Quebec in August 1992 at which endangered languages of the world will constitute one of the two main topics of the Congress, and at which most of the eight world experts on endangered languages referred to at the beginning of this letter will be present. Equally, the endangered languages problem in the world will be given another hard look at the next General Assembly of CIPSH in Harare, Zimbabwe, in September 1992, in the framework of a Symposium on African languages which will be held under the auspices of that General Assembly.

S.A. Wurm
President of CIPSH

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