Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger

The Atlas classifies endangered languages into five categories. A language that is 'vulnerable’ is spoken by most people of a community across all generations and can be the first-language of many speakers, but is generally only spoken in certain domains, such as within the home. ‘Definitely endangered’ languages are no longer learned at home as the mother tongue, meaning that younger generations cannot speak the language. The youngest speakers are of parental age.

The languages that are only spoken by people of the older generations are termed as ‘severely endangered’. While the parental generation may understand these languages, they do not converse regularly in them or pass it down to their children.

A ‘critically endangered’ language is not used for everyday interactions and the people who do remember it are from the great-grandparental generation. Even those who remember it may not use it on a regular basis. Finally, ‘extinct’ languages are those no one speaks in or remembers.

Around one-thirds of the languages in the world are found in Sub-Saharan Africa, the report states. Even today, Africans speak with each other in more than 2,000 languages. However, up to 10 per cent of these languages, especially those spoken by smaller communities, are at a risk of disappearing in the next century.

In the Indian subcontinent, the report records almost 300 languages to be under threat, out of which 40 are ‘critically endangered’ and 10 have already gone extinct. More than 100 are categorised as ‘vulnerable’, around 100 more as ‘definitely endangered’ and about two dozen are ‘severely endangered’.

The list of languages under threat in the region include approximately 180 Tibeto-Burman languages spoken by communities along the Himalayan chain. Many Dravidian, Indo-Aryan and Austro-Asiatic languages, along with several Daic languages spoken by communities in central, eastern and north-eastern part of India are also under threat, as per the report.

More than half of the roughly 170 endangered languages within India are the Tibeto-Burman languages found in north-east India, especially in the states of Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland.

Other endangered languages in the country include: two dozen Austro-Asiatic languages (eastern India and the Nicobar islands), a dozen Tibeto-Burman languages (Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand), two dozen Dravidian languages (central and south India), two dozen Indo-Aryan languages (central and northern India) and a few Daic languages (Assam).

According to the report, the reason for these languages being under threat in India is not a lack of linguistic or grammatical complexity. These languages are in decline because they are considered to be ‘unfashionable’, are not taught in schools and lack the necessary state support.

The report also highlights the lack of a viable script for most of the languages in India. Although scripts for some have been ‘rediscovered or revived’, only a few are in regular use in public settings.

In India, languages gain ‘official’ status when they are included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. The Schedule currently contains 22 such languages, but only two languages included in it are endangered languages – Meithei or Manipuri and Bodo.

Multilingualism is the general practice across the Indian subcontinent. In such a scenario, the mother tongue – which is often an endangered language – gets marginalised in favour of the language dominant in the region. The report says that probably most of the endangered languages in the subcontinent will survive for decades to come. Others, however, will face extinction by 2100.

Focus and Factoids by Sowmya Vaidyanathan.