[PLUG-TALK] The Small Island Where 500 People Speak Nine Different Languages

[John Jason Jordan]

On Mon, 26 Nov 2018 17:22:09 -0800
Galen Seitz <galens at seitzassoc.com> dijo:

>More fodder for John:
>
><https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/11/receptive-multilingualism-small-languages/576649/

Coincidence that you should bring up that article - I just finished a
bunch of research on one of the languages of Arnhem Land (Djinang),
which required getting into a lot of the other languages in the area.

Here is a quote from the article: "Languages are associated with
particular pieces of land or territory on the island, and clans claim
ownership of that land, so languages are also considered to be owned by
clans." That quote is key to understanding why there are so many
languages in Arnhem Land. Each 'clan' (I put it in quotes because they
are not what English speakers normally think of by 'clan') has an area
with loose boundaries but a defined focal point, usually one of the many
ponds which dot the region. Each such area can support a limited number
of people, so the population of a 'clan' is usually limited to 100 to
500 people or so. 

And then we get to the moiety system. In European societies in-breeding
is controlled by religious / legal rules involving degree of kinship.
In other areas of the world (like Australia) societies control
in-breeding by rules of exogamy. In the Arnhem Land region everyone and
every clan belongs to one of two moieties, and you must marry someone
from the other moiety. And since you end up marrying outside your clan
you become multilingual, else you wouldn't be able to communicate with
your spouse, plus you still speak the languages of your parents. The
children also end up at least bilingual, speaking mostly the father's
language, but using the mother's language to talk to her and her
relatives. And then, many become multilingual due to contact with
additional clans. And add the fact that most know at least some
English, and many have native fluency. 

Linguists have classified almost all these languages as endangered, but
that may be overstating the issue. (Most linguists believe that within
the next 50 years half of the world's current 7,000 languages will be
extinct, resulting in massive loss to science.) Classifying these
languages as endangered fails to take into account the vigor that these
languages enjoy - children still learn them, and the people take great
pride in their language, considering how their culture ties their
language to their land. In my opinion these languages should be classed
as threatened, not endangered.