When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics) (Hardcover)

by K. David Harrison (Author)
Key Phrases: new rice, innate number sense, topographic knowledge, Papua New Guinea, Endangered Number Systems, Aunt Marta (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Harrison brings the personal as well as the academic to this very interesting and readable book." --Language Documentation & Conservation
"Engaging and non-technical enough to arouse the interest of non-linguists, but wide-ranging enough and well-sourced enough to appeal to linguists as well." --Linguist List
"Harrison tackles the question of what is lost when a language dies from the vantage point of field studies with some of the few remaining speakers of endangered languages in Siberia, Mongolia, and elsewhere. When Languages Die reveals an astonishingly rich catalog of human intellectual heritage and scientific knowledge on the verge of disappearing as many of the world's small languages become extinct." --Suzanne Romaine, Oxford University
"Depending on how one counts, it is likely that hald of the world's languages will be lost over the next thirty years, a dramatic change in human history. Harrison explores dying languages, how they differ from stable languages, how they encode cultural information that is lost with them, how their speakers behave, and much more. He tells a fascinating and tragic story of immense drama." --David W. Lightfoot, National Science Foundation
"Written in clear and concise prose, When Languages Die provides a captivating account of how languages encode and categorize human knowledge and experience. Harrison brings together a wealth of examples from all over the world to illustrate just how very much is lost when a language ceases to be spoken. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in people and how we think, perceive, and understand the world we live in." --Lenore A. Grenoble, Dartmouth College


Product Description
It is commonly agreed by linguists and anthropologists that the majority of languages spoken now around the globe will likely disappear within our lifetime. The phenomenon known as language death has started to accelerate as the world has grown smaller.

This extinction of languages, and the knowledge therein, has no parallel in human history. K. David Harrison's book is the first to focus on the essential question, what is lost when a language dies? What forms of knowledge are embedded in a language's structure and vocabulary? And how harmful is it to humanity that such knowledge is lost forever?

Harrison spans the globe from Siberia, to North America, to the Himalayas and elsewhere, to look at the human knowledge that is slowly being lost as the languages that express it fade from sight. He uses fascinating anecdotes and portraits of some of these languages' last remaining speakers, in order to demonstrate that this knowledge about ourselves and the world is inherently precious and once gone, will be lost forever. This knowledge is not only our cultural heritage (oral histories, poetry, stories, etc.) but very useful knowledge about plants, animals, the seasons, and other aspects of the natural world--not to mention our understanding of the capacities of the human mind. Harrison's book is a testament not only to the pressing issue of language death, but to the remarkable span of human knowledge and ingenuity. It will fascinate linguists, anthropologists, and general readers.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; illustrated edition edition (February 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195181921
• ISBN-13: 978-0195181920
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #676,809 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Sticky" Knowledge, February 5, 2007

By	Found Highways (Las Vegas) - See all my reviews

Several people have written about so-called "language death" (David Crystal and Mark Abley have written books on the stubject). But K. David Harrison's book When Languages Die shows what it really means when a language "dies."

First of all, Harrison makes it clear the death metaphor isn't perfect. Languages aren't people; they can't die. Instead "language shift - - the process by which younger people in a community choose not to speak the ancestral language and opt for the dominant national language" takes place. Harrison has spent years with, among others, the Tofa and Tuvan people in Siberia (whose Turkic languages have been replaced by Russian) and the nomadic Monchak people in Mongolia, who "have been linguistically fully assimilated to Mongolian."

Harrison uses examples from over a hundred different indigenous languages to show the different ways people have thought about the world.

Harrison points out that it's not so much globalization as urbanization that's responsible for language disappearance: "In crowded urban spaces, small languages usually lose the conditions they need for survival."

Harrison shows why we need to at least document the thousands of languages that will disappear this century. We don't even know what knowledge we'll lose. Language is "sticky" when written down, but most languages have never had writing systems. And if we lose the knowledge of how people have thought, we won't know how people can think.

The saddest story in the book belongs to Vasya Gabov, the youngest speaker of Os ("O" with an umlaut). The Os people fish and hunt in central Siberia. In school Gabov was forbidden to speak his own language and forced to speak Russian. He reacted by inventing an alphabet for Os based on Cyrillic. (Harrison goes into detail about how Gabov made the Russian alphabet work for Os.) Then, once Gabov had a way of recording his native language, he started keeping a journal in Os. But years later, when someone mocked him for writing in Os, the feelings of shame from school came back and he "threw his journal - - the first and only book ever written in his native Os tongue - - out into the forest to rot."

Harrison's telling of Vasya Gabov's story illustrates something that's clear throughout the book - - Harrison may be interested as a scientist in these languages for their own sake, but he cares for the "last speakers" he's lived with as human beings.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Two thought-provoking arguments for language preservation, July 16, 2008

By	Christopher Culver - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Every two weeks, a language dies. Over the past several years there have been several books written about this sad phenomenon, ranging from popular works such as Mark Abley's Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages to more academic coverage like Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages by Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine. K. David Harrison's When Languages Die has a universal appeal. The author, a professor of linguistics at Swathmore College, writes in an approachable style that emphasizes the human element of language death, the last speakers of languages who feel great pain at their loss, while giving a rigorous argument for language preservation.

One common point in favor of language preservation is that certain possibilities of human language are found only in small indigenous languages, and were they not attested there, we would not know the human brain could accept such features. Urarina, a language spoken in the Amazon that has OVS word order, is the standard example and is present here. Harrison, however, gives some original arguments. His fieldwork has taken him to several smaller populations of Eastern Europe, Siberia, the Philippines and Mongolia. He has visited populations who maintain a traditional way of life with complex folk techniques. Harrison's first argument for language preservation is that the switch from an indigenous language and its useful terminology for local industry to an outside language creates inefficiency. He observes that older reindeer herders among Siberian peoples speaking their own language are able to express themselves about their duties much more concisely than a younger generation speaking Russian, who must resort to circumlocution. I like this argument. It does not resort to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language determines what you can say, for the younger generation can still speak of the details of reindeer herding, but it sees value in a language that can encode such information more efficiently.

Harrison's second argument for action against language death is that traditional languages pass down useful knowledge through the generations simply by being used, and this knowledge is lost through adopting an outside language. He gives exhaustive coverage of various calendar systems throughout the world, where names for months are tied to the agriculture or hunting cycle. Simply by growing up speaking such a language, a young person is endowed with knowledge of the plant cycle or the breeding habits of local wildlife. He gives examples of Siberian populations who no longer remember details of certain natural phenonmenon because they have lost their traditional calendar and use only the Russian one. While in many cases this is applicable, this argument doesn't hold when local peoples simply cease caring about traditional views of the natural environment. The same forces which encourage language shift, industrialization and urbanization, are those which tend to replace traditional ways of life altogether. When people are living in large blocks of flats in the city, going to work in offices or factories, is the traditional calendar any more meaningful than the new one?

In fact, this ties into one major objection I have to pleas for language preservation as usually formulated. As linguists, we can agree with languages are interesting and worthy of preservation. We might agree that some of what indigenous populations do, such as their agricultural lore, should be preserved. However, I don't see how we must all believe that all indigenous ways of life are worth maintaining. This is especially true with regards to religion. Whatever your spiritual beliefs are, religion is usually an issue of what is right against what is falsehood, and it doesn't make sense to call for relativism. Have some priorities here, people. While less critical of missionary efforts than other books on this subject, even Harrison succumbs to this, writing on page 153 'We should be sensitive to the impending loss of so many more religions and worldviews as languages die.' I would like to make linguistics my life's work, but there's no way I buy that.

The book is lavishly illustrated with photos of the speakers of threatened languages and with various diagrams. The author even includes sign languages alongside spoken languages, which no other work on the subject to my knowledge has done. Of the books I've read on the general phenomenon of language death and the worthiness of language preservation, Harrison's When Languages Die is, while by no means perfect, probably the best.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Magic will gone, July 25, 2007

By	Aleksandar Perisic (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a very interesting book that will ask from you to deeply think about our entire civilization. We tend to make everything unanimous, and this book clearly explains why that might be futile for our future. It explains as well how different cultures keep knowledge and science discoveries inseparable from the common every-day life. This could be the answer why it is so difficult to trace the methods that ancient civilizations had used to create their marvels.
Since the book reaches the Universe of human thoughts and ideas, it is of course impossible from the author to get over his personal background, so he is matching found examples from tribes and peoples with his developed Western civilization sense. That is unavoidable, yet different author would certainly take other samples or other chapters in his story, but that might not make the story any better.
Sure, by all means don't miss this book. You will start thinking about yourself and your environment in a very new way definitely.