La langue est morte. Vive la langue!

Last Thursday was the 14th annual UNESCO International Mother Language Day. I'd call it Mother Tongue Day, myself – but who cares? In a world where we are bombarded with initiatives all the time, why should the language we speak – a 'choice' usually imposed on us by family and/or the accident of where we were born or raised – be given any special attention at all? Well, UNESCO's initiative here is part of a desire to "promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by peoples of the world" and "promote unity in diversity and international understanding, through multilingualism and multiculturalism."

A recent article in a Sunday newspaper over here in nearby Liechtenstein, quoting UNESCO's own figures, claims that 50% of the world's 6000 or so languages could die out this century, as the natural process of language death is accelerating like never before. It is understandable that UNESCO should want to celebrate linguistic diversity and cultural pluralism. But languages cannot be kept in a glass cabinet and protected for their own sake. They are changing entities. The survival of any language variety depends on its capacity to fulfil communicative functions which, crucially, are accepted and practised in the same way by significant numbers of users internationally for their own social or economic needs. Incidentally, I prefer the term 'language variety' to 'language' in discussions of this nature. Otherwise we run the risk of getting bogged down in issues of 'dialect' vs. 'official language' as well as language and national identity.

However, the surprising fact that half of humanity speaks one of only 19 different languages does not mean that lesser-spoken language varieties will necessarily die out if they are unable to compete with the others (the top five most-spoken ones currently being Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi/Urdu and all forms of Arabic). I say this because last Wednesday (20 February) was also the 75th anniversary of the recognition of Romansh as the fourth national language of Switzerland. Figures vary, though according to the 2000 census, the variety was said to have around 60,000 regular speakers.

You might wonder how such a minority language variety could survive. But if the will of the people and active governmental support are able to secure a viable future as an important form of communication – and more than a mere cultural relic – then even acknowledging that many varieties will struggle globally; there is no reason why people cannot at least slow down the rate of language death through their own actions. I believe we should accept that a significant number of language varieties will die out. In the top 10 languages cited by the Liechtenstein article as those languages most widely spoken at present, French did not even make the list! I think the changes we are seeing are an inevitable consequence of globalisation. So if the future of any language variety cannot be secured beyond a local level; then whilst we should actively investigate its bygone culture, keeping it alive artificially serves no purpose.