Language revitalization

thumb|Hebrew [[translation of the "Are at this hour asleep!" monologue from Henry IV, Part 2 by Solomon Löwisohn, 1816. The revitalization of Hebrew is the only successful example of language revival. Those involved can include linguists, cultural or community groups, or governments. Some argue for a distinction between language revival (the resurrection of an extinct language with no existing native speakers) and language revitalization (the rescue of a declining or moribund language).

Languages targeted for language revitalization include those whose use and prominence is severely limited. Sometimes various tactics of language revitalization can even be used to try to revive extinct languages. Though the goals of language revitalization vary greatly from case to case, they typically involve attempting to expand the number of speakers and use of a language, or trying to maintain the current level of use to protect the language from extinction. Language revitalization can face significant barriers, not the least of which can come from governments, such as a general lack of support or funding for the projects, or a system that may actively repress the minority language. Other barriers could be a lack of speakers, a lack of relevant teaching material, or vocabulary loss.

Reasons for revitalization vary: they can include physical danger affecting those whose language is dying, economic danger such as the exploitation of indigenous natural resources, political danger such as genocide, or cultural danger/assimilation. In recent times alone, it is estimated that more than 2000 languages have already become extinct. The UN estimates that more than half of the languages spoken today have fewer than 10,000 speakers and that a quarter have fewer than 1,000 speakers; and that, unless there are some efforts to maintain them, over the next hundred years most of these will become extinct. These figures are often cited as reasons why language revitalization is necessary to preserve linguistic diversity. Culture and identity are also frequently cited reasons for language revitalization, when a language is perceived as a unique "cultural treasure". A community often sees language as a unique part of its culture, connecting it with its ancestors or with the land, making up an essential part of its history and self-image. Endangered or at risk languages can be elevated by making them into a national language, for example the Quechua language of Peru.

Language revitalization is also closely tied to the linguistic field of language documentation. In this field, linguists try to create a complete record of a language's grammar, vocabulary, and linguistic features. This practice can often lead to more concern for the revitalization of a specific language on study. Furthermore, the task of documentation is often taken on with the goal of revitalization in mind.

Reasons for language endangerment

Language endangerment can occur for a variety of reasons, though one of the most common is colonialism. It is estimated that around 30%-50% of languages spoken today may vanish within the next century. Languages loss is often the result of genocide, cultural assimilation, and discrimination, leading to fewer native speakers. In Latin America, where 560 Indigenous languages are in use, about 1/5th of Indigenous peoples do not speak the native language of the region. In the Caribbean, nearly all Indigenous languages have disappeared. Colonial powers have used discriminatory educational practices against Indigenous languages; in 20th century Mexico, schools taught almost exclusively Spanish, in an attempt to assimilate Indigenous Mexicans into a uniform Mexican identity; similarly, institutions in the United States and Canada forcibly assimilated Indigenous children, banning all languages with the exception of English, and "operated under a mission of linguicide".

Creole languages also face endangerment. "Creoles" are often typically formed via the mixing of two or more distinct languages, and are often, but not always formed from so-called "pidgin" languages. Furthermore, Creoles have historically been formed due to colonialism; perhaps the most common instance of Creole languages being used is in former plantation colonies. Globalization poses a threat to the continued use of Creoles; as Errington (2003) argues, globalization's sociolinguistic impact restrict the ability for Creole and other marginalized languages to survive by creating a climate in which already dominant languages are valued.

Safe: All generations use language in variety of settings
Stable: Multilingualism in the native language and one or more dominant language(s) has usurped certain important communication context.
Definitively Endangered: spoken by older people; not fully used by younger generations.
Severely Endangered: Only a few adult speakers remain; no longer used as native language by children.
Critically Endangered: The language is spoken only by grandparents and older generations.
Extinct: There is no one who can speak or remember the language.

Other scales

Another scale for identifying degrees of language endangerment is used in a 2003 paper ("Language Vitality and Endangerment") commissioned by UNESCO from an international group of linguists. The linguists, among other goals and priorities, create a scale with six degrees for language vitality and endangerment. They also propose nine factors or criteria (six of which use the six-degree scale) to "characterize a language's overall sociolinguistic situation". consists of an eight-stage process. Efforts should be concentrated on the earlier stages of restoration until they have been consolidated before proceeding to the later stages. The eight stages are:

Acquisition of the language by adults, who in effect act as language apprentices (recommended where most of the remaining speakers of the language are elderly and socially isolated from other speakers of the language).
Create a socially integrated population of active speakers (or users) of the language (at this stage it is usually best to concentrate mainly on the spoken language rather than the written language).
In localities where there are a reasonable number of people habitually using the language, encourage the informal use of the language among people of all age groups and within families and bolster its daily use through the establishment of local neighbourhood institutions in which the language is encouraged, protected and (in certain contexts at least) used exclusively.
In areas where oral competence in the language has been achieved in all age groups, encourage literacy in the language, but in a way that does not depend upon assistance from (or goodwill of) the state education system.
Where the state permits it, and where numbers warrant, encourage the use of the language in compulsory state education.
Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated, encourage the use of the language in the workplace.
Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated, encourage the use of the language in local government services and mass media.
Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated, encourage use of the language in higher education, government, etc.

This model of language revival is intended to direct efforts to where they are most effective and to avoid wasting energy trying to achieve the later stages of recovery when the earlier stages have not been achieved. For instance, it is probably wasteful to campaign for the use of a language on television or in government services if hardly any families are in the habit of using the language.

Additionally, Tasaku Tsunoda describes a range of different techniques or methods that speakers can use to try to revitalize a language, including techniques to revive extinct languages and maintain weak ones. The techniques he lists are often limited to the current vitality of the language.

He claims that the immersion method cannot be used to revitalize an extinct or moribund language. In contrast, the master-apprentice method of one-on-one transmission on language proficiency can be used with moribund languages. Several other methods of revitalization, including those that rely on technology such as recordings or media, can be used for languages in any state of viability.

{| class="wikitable sortable"

|+ A method's effectiveness depends on the language's viability.

! Method

! colspan="3" |Degree of endangerment

! !! Weakening !! Moribund !! Dead/extinct

| Immersion|| || ||

| Neighborhood || || ||

| Bilingual || || ||

| Master–apprentice || || ||

| Total physical response || || ||

| Telephone || || ||

| Radio || || ||

| Multimedia || || ||

| Two-way || || ||

| Formulaic|| || ||

| Artificial pidgin|| || ||

| Place name || || ||

| Reclamation || || ||

| Adoption|| || ||

Factors in successful language revitalization

David Crystal, in his book Language Death, proposes that language revitalization is more likely to be successful if its speakers:

increase the language's prestige within the dominant community;
increase their wealth and income;
increase their legitimate power in the eyes of the dominant community;
have a strong presence in the education system;
can write down the language;
can use electronic technology.

In her book, Endangered Languages: An Introduction, Sarah Thomason notes the success of revival efforts for modern Hebrew and the relative success of revitalizing Māori in New Zealand (see ). One notable factor these two examples share is that the children were raised in fully immersive environments. In the case of Hebrew, it was on early collective-communities called kibbutzim. For the Māori language In New Zealand, this was done through a language nest.

Furthermore, the production of educational materials in an at-risk language can be a factor in increasing the numbers of speakers: Navajo and Hawaiian, in collaboration with native speakers and educators, were added to the language platform Duolingo in 2018.

According to Zuckermann, "revival linguistics combines scientific studies of native language acquisition and foreign language learning. After all, language reclamation is the most extreme case of second-language learning. Revival linguistics complements the established area of documentary linguistics, which records endangered languages before they fall asleep." but suggests that <blockquote>"there are linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would help revivalists and first nations' leaders to work more efficiently. For example, it is easier to resurrect basic vocabulary and verbal conjugations than sounds and word order. Revivalists should be realistic and abandon discouraging, counter-productive slogans such as "Give us authenticity or give us death!"

Traditionalist

Other linguists have argued that when language revitalization borrows heavily from the majority language, the result is a new language, perhaps a creole or pidgin. For example, the existence of "Neo-Hawaiian" as a separate language from "Traditional Hawaiian" has been proposed, due to the heavy influence of English on every aspect of the revived Hawaiian language. This has also been proposed for Irish, with a sharp division between "Urban Irish" (spoken by second-language speakers) and traditional Irish (as spoken as a first language in Gaeltacht areas). Ó Béarra stated: "[to] follow the syntax and idiomatic conventions of English, [would be] producing what amounts to little more than English in Irish drag." With regard to the then-moribund Manx language, the scholar T. F. O'Rahilly stated, "When a language surrenders itself to foreign idiom, and when all its speakers become bilingual, the penalty is death." Neil McRae has stated that the uses of Scottish Gaelic are becoming increasingly tokenistic, and native Gaelic idiom is being lost in favor of artificial terms created by second-language speakers.

Specific revitalization efforts

The total revival of a dead language (in the sense of having no native speakers) to become the shared means of communication of a self-sustaining community of several million first language speakers has happened only once, in the case of Hebrew, resulting in Modern Hebrew – now the national language of Israel. In this case, there was a unique set of historical and cultural characteristics that facilitated the revival. (See Revival of the Hebrew language.) Hebrew, once largely a liturgical language, was re-established as a means of everyday communication by Jews, some of whom had lived in what is now the State of Israel, starting in the nineteenth century. It is the world's most famous and successful example of language revitalization.

In a related development, literary languages without native speakers enjoyed great prestige and practical utility as lingua francas, often counting millions of fluent speakers at a time. In many such cases, a decline in the use of the literary language, sometimes precipitous, was later accompanied by a strong renewal. This happened, for example, in the revival of Classical Latin in the Renaissance, and the revival of Sanskrit in the early centuries AD. An analogous phenomenon in contemporary Arabic-speaking areas is the expanded use of the literary language (Modern Standard Arabic, a form of the Classical Arabic of the 6th century AD). This is taught to all educated speakers and is used in radio broadcasts, formal discussions, etc.

In addition, literary languages have sometimes risen to the level of becoming first languages of very large language communities. An example is standard Italian, which originated as a literary language based on the language of 13th-century Florence, especially as used by such important Florentine writers as Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. This language existed for several centuries primarily as a literary vehicle, with few native speakers; even as late as 1861, on the eve of Italian unification, the language only counted about 500,000 speakers (many non-native), out of a total population of . The subsequent success of the language has been through conscious development, where speakers of any of the numerous Italian languages were taught standard Italian as a second language and subsequently imparted it to their children, who learned it as a first language. This, however, came at the expense of local Italian languages, most of which are now endangered. Success was enjoyed in similar circumstances by High German, standard Czech, Castilian Spanish and other languages.

Language revitalization efforts are ongoing around the world. Revitalization teams are utilizing modern technologies to increase contact with indigenous languages and to record traditional knowledge.

Africa

The Coptic language began its decline when Arabic became the predominant language in Egypt. Pope Shenouda III established the Coptic Language Institute in December 1976 in Saint Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo for the purpose of reviving the Coptic language.

Ge’ez, or Classical Ethiopic, is largely used within a liturgical context by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Once the principal language of the Axumite Empire, the language was often used as a lingua franca until the 16th century where spoken languages such as Amharic began to take its place. There are modern revivalist movements to revive the use of Ge’ez as a literary and spoken language.

North America

Widespread use of Native American languages was significantly reduced by the U.S. government through mandated cultural assimilation in boarding schools where indigenous children were punished for using their native language. In recent years, a growing number of Native American tribes have been trying to revitalize their languages. For example, there are apps (including phrases, word lists and dictionaries) in many Native languages including Cree, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Lakota, Ojibwe, Oneida, Massachusett, Navajo, Halq'emeylem, Gwych'in, and Lushootseed.

In Canada, the Wapikoni Mobile project travels to indigenous communities and provides lessons in film making. Program leaders travel across Canada with mobile audiovisual production units, and aim to provide indigenous youth with a way to connect with their culture through a film topic of their choosing. The Wapikona project submits its films to events around the world as an attempt to spread knowledge of indigenous culture and language.

Wampanoag, a language spoken by the people of the same name in Massachusetts, underwent a language revival project led by Jessie Little Doe Baird, a trained linguist. Members of the tribe use the extensive written records that exist in their language, including a translation of the Bible and legal documents, in order to learn and teach Wampanoag. The project has seen children speaking the language fluently for the first time in over 100 years. In addition, there are currently attempts at reviving the Chochenyo language of California, which had become extinct.

Efforts are being made by the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community and others to keep Chinook Jargon, also known as Chinuk Wawa, alive. This is helped by the corpus of songs and stories collected from Victoria Howard and published by Melville Jacobs.

The open-source platform FirstVoices hosts community-managed websites for 85 language revitalization projects, covering multiple varieties of 33 Indigenous languages in British Columbia as well as over a dozen languages from "elsewhere in Canada and around the globe", along with 17 dictionary apps.

Tlingit

Similar to other indigenous languages, Tlingit is critically endangered. Fewer than 100 fluent Elders existed as of 2017. He is an associate professor of Alaska Native Languages in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alaska Southeast which offers a minor in Tlingit language and an emphasis on Alaska Native Languages and Studies within a Bachelorʼs degree in Liberal Arts.

Mixtec

In Mexico, the Mixtec people's language heavily revolves around the interaction between climate, nature, and what it means for their livelihood. UNESCO's LINKS (Local and Indigenous Knowledge) program recently underwent a project to create a glossary of Mixtec terms and phrases related to climate. UNESCO believes that the traditional knowledge of the Mixtec people via their deep connection with weather phenomena can provide insight on ways to address climate change. Their intention in creating the glossary is to "facilitate discussions between experts and the holders of traditional knowledge".

South America

Kichwa is the variety of the Quechua language spoken in Ecuador. Quechua is one of the most widely spoken indigenous languages in South America with approximately 7 million speakers. Despite this fact, Kichwa is a threatened language, mainly because of the expansion of Spanish in South America. One community of original Kichwa speakers, Lagunas, was one of the first indigenous communities to switch to the Spanish language. According to King, this was because of the increase of trade and business with the large Spanish-speaking town nearby. The Lagunas people assert that it was not for cultural assimilation purposes, as they value their cultural identity highly.

Asia

Hebrew

The revival of the Hebrew language is the only successful example of a revived dead language. The Hebrew language survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy and rabbinic literature. With the rise of Zionism in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, becoming primarily a spoken lingua franca among the early Jewish immigrants to Ottoman Palestine and received the official status in the 1922 constitution of the British Mandate for Palestine and subsequently of the State of Israel.

Sanskrit

There have been recent attempts at reviving Sanskrit in India. However, despite these attempts, there are no first language speakers of Sanskrit in India. In each of India's recent decennial censuses, several thousand citizens