Linguist, leading research fellow of the Institute of Linguistics at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladimir Plungyan, argues that the demise of some languages is inevitable. He also notes that importance of competition between them and the need to conserve the multilingual culture.
– Why are scholars talking about the demise of many languages?
– This is a sign of our times: the number of languages in the world is rapidly dwindling. This is a unique experience for mankind, though languages went extinct before as well. Earlier a language died with its bearers, while today people do not vanish physically but they stop speaking their native tongues. As they communicate with their children, they no longer encourage bilingualism, as was the case yesterday, but only the language which is in higher demand. In Europe this is English and in Russia this is Russian. Many rustic Tatars, Bashkirs or Caucasians still communicate with children in their mother tongues, whereas in the urban space Russian is crowding ethnic languages and dialects from common usage. The next generation will hardly be able to speak their indigenous languages and their children may altogether forget their native language.
– Why is this happening?
– People just do not want to speak their native languages.
– Then should we mourn over the demise of languages? Maybe with their loss mankind will finally overcome the Babylonian curse? Perhaps this is not so bad?
– When I was a student, I moonlighted as a tutor. In those days I had a linguistic internship in the highland of Dagestan and I helped a local schoolboy who wanted to enter a university to improve his Russian. I occasionally admired the beauty and rarity of Avar constructions and phrases. One day the boy said to me: “Do not tell me anything about my language, as the first thing I’d like to do is to forget it.” I was struck dumb because I came there to study his language. We have to be realists: scholars may lament the loss of rare languages and call upon the world to preserve linguistic diversity, but people refuse to speak their native languages of their own accord because they believe it will be better for them. If we want to conserve rare languages we must somehow change the world so that people would not want to bid farewell to their mother tongues. But for now they prefer to speak the languages which give them more opportunities for professional growth, their career and simply material well-being. In the same way a person prefers to swap a low-paid job for a well-paid job. Whenever a person has a chance to learn a language which is in higher demand in the world, he or she does that in order to improve his or her living conditions.
– Does that mean that one day the world will speak one language and this will likely be English?
– God forbid that a single language is spoken in the world, be it English or Chinese. But those who do not like English and hope it won’t stand the burden of globalization should better not be lulled into complacency. There are no grounds for optimism from the linguistic perspective. English is being consistently transformed into a universal tool of international communication. It will survive in the global world and this fate will most certainly be shared by Chinese. By the way, nobody knows what language will be dominant in the end.
– Will the world speak Chinese and switch to hieroglyphs?
– Linguistically, Chinese is rather plain. As for hieroglyphs and intonation, which are far from being universal indeed, I’d say Chinese can easily be adapted to the needs of those who want to speak it, even as English was simplified to the “American English” version which everybody in the world can master. For the sake of promoting their language the Chinese may well use the Latin graphic symbols. What will hinder them from being flexible, given that flexibility is intrinsic in the Chinese mindset? In my opinion, Chinese has good prospects in the world, since it does not have any irregular verbs (even English has them) or sophisticated declension and conjugation, typical of Russian.
– How can local and regional languages be preserved if people stop speaking them?
– In Russia, Ukrainian serves as a touchstone of linguistic tolerance. It is often mocked as a funny dialect. In this sense we emulate France. If someone started speaking with a pronounced Breton or Provencal accent at the university or on TV, this person would be scoffed. In Russia too only the Moscow pronunciation is considered the “classical” Russian language. Retention of unstressed ‘o’ typical of Vologda and some other regions, South-Russian Surzhik (a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian) or Siberian patter is derided as “crass.” On the other hand, most European nations welcome different dialects and try to preserve them as an element of linguistic diversity. Russia has a long way to go in order to rise to this level of linguistic culture. In the beginning we’ll have to learn English as the language of international communication. When Russians start speaking English en masse, then I believe our society will feel the need for bilingualism or trilingualism. When Russian people speak Russian and English fluently, they will probably want to learn a language of their neighbors – Ukrainian, Kazakh or even rare ones like Avar or Chechen.
Anton Samarin
