About once every two weeks, a language goes extinct, said David Harrison, a Swarthmore linguistics professor, before a screening of his documentary "The Linguists" last night in Smith-Buonanno 106.
"The Linguists" compellingly argues that endangered languages - some spoken by less than 100 people - deserve scientific documentation before they vanish.
The film depicts Harrison, in partnership with linguistic researcher Gregory Anderson, undertaking an expedition to track down the last speakers of Chulym, Sora and Kallawaya, languages spoken in areas of Siberia, India and Bolivia, respectively. The 64-minute film chronicles the linguists' efforts to document the three languages, a tall order when surviving speakers are few, and many among them are old and hard of hearing.
But the linguistically endowed duo, who speak a combined 25 languages between them, embraces immersive learning, quickly acquiring the basics of each language. Even from such elementary words as the vocabulary for body parts, colors and numbers, they unearth surprising cultural features. They find, for instance, that Sora, with only 300,000 speakers, has one of the most complicated number systems in the world.
According to Harrison, marginalized languages are being deserted because their speakers perceive them as socially inferior. It's important to document them because language contains human knowledge and histories of entire cultures, he told the audience of about 50.
Some tribal cultures discourage or outright forbid children to speak the indigenous language, Harrison said. "People are abandoning their native language because they assume they will gain an economic advantage."
It is a common practice in tribal communities to send children to boarding schools to learn a modern language, which is "practical," Harrison said. But "abandoning the native language is not necessary" because children can easily become bilingual.
The film screening was sponsored by the Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences Department Undergraduate Group.
"In the past, cognitive events have been narrowly focused," said Ana Van Gulick '09, who heads the DUG. "Showing this film was an effort to contribute to a larger audience."
"The Linguists," directed by Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller and Jeremy S. Newberger and funded by the National Science Foundation, premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and will air on the Public Broadcasting Service on Feb. 26.
Since their initial trip, Harrison and Anderson have made multiple visits back to the tribal communities, Harrison said. Upon returning, the two linguists discovered that, inspired by the existence of academic interest in their languages, members of these groups had found a renewed desire to preserve their modes of speech.
"People were glad to get their story to a global population," Harrison said.
