Cambridge World Oral Literature Project

David Jefferies investigates a new initiative to preserve oral traditions

Recently, whilst discussing the perilous fate of some of the world's obscurer languages, as I am wont to do from time to time, conversation turned to a tale of two brothers who were the last two speakers of a language, the name of which now escapes me. However, the point of this story is that the language no longer exists as a spoken language due to the fact that the two fractious siblings are no longer on speaking terms.

As the person who told me all this had an English Language A-level, I can be reasonably sure that the tale is a true one. Even if it did turn out to be apocryphal, we are still furnished with a good place to start talking about endangered languages; about what is lost when a language dies; and what, if anything, should be done to preserve linguistic diversity.

It is estimated that there are currently 6,000 to 7,000 living languages. The Cambridge based World Oral Literature Project (WOLP) estimates that around half of these languages will stop existing as spoken vernaculars by the end of the century. Currently 6% of the world's languages are spoken by 94% of the world's population.

But what is lost when a language dies and why should we try to save endangered languages? French linguist Claude Hagege argues that the world's linguistic diversity represents an 'enormous cultural heritage'. Il Carso, the mountainous region on the Italian-Slovenian border, provides us not only with prosecco, but also an example of the value of local languages. In the dialetto carsico, which I am informed is possibly the 'weirdest dialect in the world', words like osmiza have evolved which describe very particular expressions of culture. (An osmiza is a farmhouse, where wine or grappa is made, and every now and then is transformed into a bar.)

Languages maintain 'the connections and associations that define a culture'. WOLP considers 'the transmission of oral literature' to be at the heart of cultural practice of many communities worldwide. 'Performances of creative works - which include ritual texts, curative chants, epic poems, folk tales, creation tales, songs, myths, word games, [and] historical narratives - are increasingly endangered' and have both scientific and aesthetic value.

For small under-resourced communities speaking these dwindling languages, the pressures of globalisation and rapid socio-economic change are often just too great; and around 130 languages are spoken by fewer than 10 people. Faced with the imminent extinction of a substantial proportion of the world's languages, WOLP seeks to support fieldworkers and local communities engaged in the documentation and preservation of oral literature.

There are encouraging signs. Languages such as Welsh, Gaelic, and Cornish have been brought back from the brink of extinction; the revival of Cornish as a spoken language being partly inspired by the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language in Israel.

WOLP and similar groups are to be lauded for their efforts to conserve the expressive diversity of human language and also for safe guarding the various forms of knowledge that such languages contain.

David Jefferies