Языковая ситуация в мире
1. Сколько на планете языков?
На скольких языках говорят люди, населяющие планету? Ученые называют различное число языков планеты: одни говорят о 20 тысячах, другие — о 10 тысячах, третьи — о 5 тысячах, а некоторые лингвисты полагают, что население нашей планеты изъясняется всего-навсего на 2 тысячах языках.
Почему языки труднее сосчитать, чем людей, на этих языках говорящих? Разница в таких подсчетах не количественная, а качественная.
Мы знаем, что в разных областях России употребляют слова и выражения, неизвестные другим жителям нашей страны: белку называют векшей, волка — бирюком и т. п.
«Баварский крестьянин мало разумеет мекленбургского, швабского, хотя все того же немецкого народа», — свидетельствует Ломоносов. По сей день в немецком языке много диалектов, которые отличаются друг от друга. И нижненемецкие диалекты стоят ближе к языку соседнего народа, голландцев, чем к диалектам немцев, жителей Баварии.
Если стать на позицию чистой лингвистики, следовало бы считать северное немецкое наречие одним самостоятельным языком, а южнонемецкий диалект — другим. Но историю языка нельзя отрывать от истории народа. И поэтому ученые считают, что есть один немецкий язык с его двумя основными диалектами.
Иногда деление на языки и диалекты происходит и по географическим причинам. Жители острова Пасхи, Гавайских и Маркизских островов, островов Кука, Туамоту, Таити, Новой Зеландии изъясняются на языках, настолько близких друг к другу, что правильнее было бы считать их диалектами одного восточно-полинезийского языка. Но …расстояние между людьми, разговаривающими на этих диалектах, — многие тысячи километров океана! И поэтому ученые считают, что население названных островов говорит на самостоятельных языках, а не на наречиях одного языка.
На острове Новая Гвинея исследователи насчитывают 300, 500, 700 и даже 1000 различных языков. И с уверенностью можно утверждать, что любое из этих чисел неточно. Численность языков Новой Гвинеи, по мере открытия новых племен, постоянно возрастает. Большинство языков объединено своеобразной «цепной связью»; они, «незаметно переходят один в другой». Вот почему нельзя точно сосчитать число языков, на которых говорит современное человечество. ( Кондратов А.М. Земля людей — земля языков. — М.: Детская литература, 1974. — 192 с.)
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Кучиной Еленой (ГПН, IV курс)
| 2. Are Dying Languages Worth Saving?
Why should endangered languages be saved? Delegates at the Trinity College Carmarthen conference explain – using nine different languages |
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Language experts are gathering at a university in the UK to discuss saving the world’s endangered languages. But is it worth keeping alive dialects that are sometimes only spoken by a handful of people, asks Tom de Castella?
“Language is the dress of thought,” Samuel Johnson once said.
About 6,000 different languages are spoken around the world. But the Foundation for Endangered Languages estimates that between 500 and 1,000 of those are spoken by only a handful of people. And every year the world loses around 25 mother tongues. That equates to losing 250 languages over a decade – a sad prospect for some.
This week a conference in Carmarthen, west Wales, organised by the foundation, is being attended by about 100 academics. They are discussing indigenous languages in Ireland, China, Australia and Spain.
“Different languages will have their quirks which tell us something about being human,” says Nicholas Ostler, the foundation’s chairman.
“And when languages are lost most of the knowledge that went with them gets lost. People do care about identity as they want to be different. Nowadays we want access to everything but we don’t want to be thought of as no more than people on the other side of the world.”
Apart from English, the United Kingdom has a number of other languages. Mr Ostler estimates that half a million people speak Welsh, a few thousand Scots are fluent in Gaelic, about 400 people speak Cornish, while the number of Manx speakers – the language of the Isle of Man – is perhaps as small as 100. But is there any point in learning the really minor languages?
3. Other opinions:
1) “I do think it’s a good thing for a child on the Isle of Man to learn Manx. I value continuity in a community.”
2) “In Europe, Mr Ostler’s view seems to command official support. There is a European Charter for Regional Languages, which every European Union member has signed, and the EU has a European Language Diversity For All programme, designed to protect the most threatened native tongues. At the end of last year the project received 2.7m euros to identify those languages most at risk.
But for some this is not just a waste of resources but a misunderstanding of how language works. The writer and broadcaster Kenan Malik says it is “irrational” to try to preserve all the world’s languages.
Earlier this year, the Bo language died out when an 85-year-old member of the Bo tribe in the India-owned Andaman islands died.
While it may seem sad that the language expired, says Mr Malik, cultural change is driving the process.
“In one sense you could call it a cultural loss. But that makes no sense because cultural forms are lost all the time. To say every cultural form should exist forever is ridiculous.” And when governments try to prop languages up, it shows a desire to cling to the past rather than move forwards, he says.
If people want to learn minority languages like Manx, that is up to them – it shouldn’t be backed by government subsidy, he argues.
“To have a public policy that a certain culture or language should be preserved shows a fundamental misunderstanding. I don’t see why it’s in the public good to preserve Manx or Cornish or any other language for that matter.” In the end, whether or not a language is viable is very simple. “If a language is one that people don’t participate in, it’s not a language anymore.”
3) “”Language is the only absolutely true democracy. It’s not what professors of linguistics or academics or journalists say, but what people do. If children in the playground start using ‘wicked’ to mean terrific then that has a big effect. Politicians make a “category mistake” when they try to interfere with language, citing an experiment in Glasgow schools that he says is doomed to fail. Offering Gaelic to children of people who don’t speak it seems like a conservation of lost glories. It’s very romantic to try and save a language but nonsense.There are competing forces at work that decide whether smaller languages survive. On the one hand globalisation will mean that many languages disappear. But some communities will always live apart, separated by sea, distance or other barriers and will therefore keep their own language. With modern communications and popular culture “you find that if enough people want to speak a language they can. In short, there is no need for handwringing. Language is not a plant that rises and falls, lives and decays. It’s a tool that’s perfectly adapted by the people using it. Get on with living and talking.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/guide/languages.shtml
http://ru.scribd.com/doc/97710254/Interesting-Facts-About-Languages-2012
Материалы предоставлены:
Ирисхановой О. К.