26 October 2017

Who will preserve languages from extinction?

and why they will do it

by Atina Dimitrova

​Nelson Mandela said: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”  Languages are the greatest way of understanding and cherishing different cultures, their traditions, customs and mythologies.  Imagine having this experience in more than just one language – in two, or even twenty.  The intercultural experience would be fascinating… if we continued studying languages…

The Observer reveals linguists’ estimates that within 20 years half of all languages worldwide will be dead.  And Tim Doner, a hyperpolyglot from the U. S., at the TEDx Talk Conference says that every two weeks a language dies because of war, famine or lack of people to practise it.  Yet, learning languages is not a boutique hobby.  Figures in The Telegraph show that three billion people use more than one language in their everyday life.  What about multilingualism, though?  And who are the people really saving languages from extinction?

Richard Simcott, a hyperpolyglot from Britain, speaks more than 20 languages.  Mr Simcott is fluent in many Romance, Germanic and Balkan tongues.  He lives in the Balkans and enjoys studying how all the languages in the region connect and the relationship between the words.   He calls this experience “enrichment and understanding of the environment”.

Speaking many languages ties into our ability to draw parallels and find contrasts.  Mr Simcott gives some examples: “I am interested in where words have come from and how the same word may work in other languages.  The word for ‘trade’ in Turkish, for example, in Macedonian means ‘doing dodgy deals’.  It is funny how from a normal word in Turkish, it has this different meaning in Macedonian.”  Another example is how the different languages inflame dissimilar feelings… and this can lead to funny situations. “There are definitely words that change the way I feel.  For example, ‘pride’ in Macedonian is spelled in a way which in Spanish means ‘fat’.  Whenever I say the word ‘pride’ in Macedonian, I always think of the Spanish one and the other way round.  These two words have merged in my head bringing different emotions,” he says.  And for him accents bring the greatest joy: “They are the badge of who we are, they are our identity”.

Mr Simcott helps save languages by speaking the less common ones like Luxembourgish and Icelandic.  When asked to identify a very challenging one which he has studied, he mentions Georgian: “It has quite tricky sounds to master.  I did not have a very strong reason to study it to a very fluent level.  I just liked the way it looked on the page.”  He also thinks that our development of writing skills does not determine our ability to speak a language.  “There are so many people who cannot read and write in the world but communicate just fine – writing came after speech,” he says.  So people interested in the social, academic and personal benefits of multilingualism are among those preserving languages, by studying and teaching many of them.

Learning new languages does not only develop our linguistic knowledge.  It improves our problem-solving skills and sharpens our memory.  This mental gymnastics also lead to many social benefits.  Alex Rawlings, the UK’s most multilingual student, according to the results of a competition run by the publisher Harper Collins in 2012, has more to add. “What is very nice about knowing many languages is the lifestyle that comes with it.  It exposes us to people that otherwise we would never be able to speak to,” he says.  Inevitably, this knowledge triggers a strong desire to travel. “If we go to a country and we do not speak the language, we rely on other people telling us about the country. But if we go to this place and speak the language, we are free to ask any questions, to have our own experience,” he adds.  Speaking 11 languages and teaching four, he identifies German as his association with the word “art”.  “I studied German in the university, we had so much of German literature.  I understood its enormous influence on the Western world,” he says.

Olly Richards, the founder of a website about language learning, believes that studying many languages is no longer an isolating hobby.  “There are people who are passionate about learning languages even though they might not have a wide experience.  I want to help them do it in an effective way,” he says.  When asked whether there is a book he has read in many languages, he says: ”The Little Prince – maybe I have read it in every language I speak and it is timeless.”  Speaking eight languages, he outlines Japanese as the most challenging one because it was the first non-Romance language for him: “I had to learn a different linguistic concept”.

And with every new language the intensity of our desire to learn more improves.  Dom Bennett, a translator from London, working mainly with Arabic, but also speaking four more languages, says: “Being ‘fluent’ always means you can improve something.  However, starting a language from scratch is what triggers my life.  I want my London somewhere else.  Having English as my mother tongue is beneficial.  But I want to be the foreigner in a basic fish shop in Madrid, Tokyo, Barcelona. This is the real world for a learner.”

Touching on a similar topic with Anastasia Ioannidi, 21, originally born in Greece, she shares her experience with English, French, Arabic, Italian etc. “Accents are exotic.  They make you travel,” she adds.  “Languages are friends.  Even if I do not go out on Saturdays, I can watch a documentary in Russian and I would be happy.”

It does not matter whether a language is spoken by four billion people or just ten worldwide.  All languages improve our cognitive flexibility and make us even more devoted to our mother tongues.  And of course, if we are able to talk to people in their languages, it makes us more tolerant because we are not restricted to a single world-view.  This is also linked to cultural empathy which lessens racism and xenophobia.  A language goes beyond vocabulary and grammar, it helps us translate revolutionary ideas… And, thanks to that, we become the ones preserving languages from extinction.

 

This article by Atina Dimitrova, a third-year journalism student at City, University of London won a prize awarded by The Shaw Sheet.

 

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