- Nettle, Daniel and Suzanne Romaine. Vanishing Voices. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-513624-1.
- Of the approximately 6000 languages in use in the world
today, nearly 85 percent have fewer than 100,000 speakers—half fewer
than 6000 speakers. Development and globalisation imperil the survival
of up to 90% of these minority languages—many are already no longer
spoken by children, which virtually guarantees their extinction.
Few details are known of many of these vanishing languages; their
disappearance will forever foreclose whatever insights they hold
to the evolution and structure of human languages, the cultures
of those who speak them, and the environments which shaped them.
Somebody ought to write a book about this. Regrettably, these authors
didn't. Instead, they sprinkle interesting factoids about endangered
languages here and there amid a Chomsky-style post-colonial rant
which attempts to conflate language diversity with biodiversity
through an argument which, in the absence of evidence, relies on
“proof through repeated assertion,” while simultaneously denying
that proliferation and extinction of languages might be a process
akin to Darwinian evolution rather than the more fashionable
doctrines of oppression and exploitation. One can only shake one's
head upon reading, “The same is true for Spanish, which is secure
in Spain, but threatened in the United States.” (p. 48) or
“Any language can, in fact, be turned to any purpose, perhaps by
the simple incorporation of a few new words.” (p. 129). A paperback edition is now
available.
October 2003 