SAVING A DYING LANGUAGE

A French linguist is in a race against time to prevent S'aoch from disappearing

• Ron Watt, an education adviser at Care Cambodia, holds a bilingual dictionary

In halting, creaky tones, the elderly chief of this tiny community spoke in his indigenous language, S’aoch, an ancient tongue linguists predict will be extinct within a generation.
Noi, who goes by a single name, is one of ten still fluent in S’aoch and the Samrong Loeu village of 110 people is the last vestige of a disappearing culture.

S’aoch is one of about 3,000 languages endangered worldwide, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation: One of them disappears about every two weeks.

In Cambodia alone, 19 languages face extinction this century. In this impoverished country where one third of the population lives on less than $1 a day, saving a dying language is a low priority.

One of the S’aoch’s few allies is Jean-Michel Filippi, a French linguist who has learned their language and transcribed about 4,000 of its words over the past nine years.
“Once a language disappears, a vision of the world disappears,” says Filippi.
His task is made harder by the fact that the S’aoch do not share his fascination. They associate their language with poverty and exclusion from Cambodian society, which is ethnically and linguistically Khmer. “We don’t use our language, because we S’aoch are taowk,” said Tuen, the chief’s son, using the Khmer word meaning “without value”.

Perhaps the fatal blow to the S’aoch was the Khmer Rouge, whose policies caused the deaths of up to 2 million people between 1975 and 1979. The communist regime uprooted Cambodians from their homes and forced them into labour camps. The S’aoch were pushed from their land and prohibited from using their native tongue. “They said we couldn’t speak our language or we would be killed,” says Noi.

The S’aoch who survived settled in this village, near the coast, where some of them had been taken by the regime.

The loss of their land signalled the death of their culture because the S’aoch were no longer self-sufficient and instead survived by selling their labour, which plunged them into poverty. Since their animist beliefs were intrinsically linked to the land, Filippi says the S’aoch also lost the core of their cultural identity.

Two non-governmental organisations, International Cooperation Cambodia and Care, are working to preserve minority culture by incorporating four minority languages into 25 schools in rural, indigenous communities. The Education Ministry cooperates with those programmes, though they do not include S’aoch.

Filippi says there are at least five indigenous groups in Cambodia with 500 members or fewer. With only minimal support for preserving their languages, they are likely to follow the S’aoch into obscurity, their “unique view” of the world forever cast into the void of undocumented history. “The fact is [the S’aoch] lost everything,” Filippi says. “And the language is going to be lost in a few years as well. They might just remain a mystery forever.”

World’s 18 most endangered languages

The following 18 languages were last known to have one remaining speaker. They are the most at-risk languages on a list of 199 classified in the United Nations Atlas of Endangered Languages as critically endangered, meaning they have fewer than ten documented speakers.

Regions with the most linguistic diversity also tend to have the most endangered languages.

• Apiaka is spoken by the indigenous people of the same name who live in the northern state of Mato Grosso in Brazil. The critically endangered language belongs to the Tupi language family. As of 2007, there was one remaining speaker.
• Bikya is spoken in the North-West Region of Cameroon, in western Africa. The last record of a speaker was in 1986, meaning the language could now be extinct. This predicament resembles that of another Cameroon language, Bishuo, whose last recorded speaker was also in 1986.
• Chana is spoken in Parana, the capital of Argentina’s province of Entre Rios. As of 2008, it had only one speaker.
• Dampal is spoken in Indonesia, near Bangkir. Unesco reported that it had one speaker as of 2000.
• Diahoi (also known as Jiahui, Jahoi, Djahui, Diahkoi and Diarroi) is spoken in Brazil. Those who speak it live on the indigenous lands Diahui, Middle Madeira river, Southern Amazonas State, Municipality of Humaita. As of 2006, one speaker was left.
• Kaixana is a language of Brazil. As of 2008, the sole remaining speaker was believed to be 78-year-old Raimundo Avelino, who lives in Limoeiro in the Japura municipality in the state of Amazonas.
• Laua is spoken in the Central Province of Papua New Guinea. It is part of the Mailuan language group and is nearly extinct, with one speaker documented in 2000.
• Patwin is a Native American language spoken in the western United States. Descendants live outside San Francisco in Cortina and Colusa, California. There was one fluent speaker documented as of 1997.
• Pazeh is spoken by Taiwan’s indigenous tribe of the same name. Pan Jin Yu, 95, was the sole known speaker as of 2008.
• Pemono is spoken in Venezuela and has one remaining speaker, who lives in an Upper Majagua village.
• Taje is one of the endangered languages spoken in Indonesia. As of 2000, there was one speaker remaining in Sulawesi.
• Taushiro (also known as Pinche, or Tausiro in Spanish) is an isolated language spoken in Peru. The speakers, who were from the Loreto Province and Tigre River basin, married non-Taushiro speakers and adopted Spanish or other languages. There was one speaker documented in 2008.
• Tinigua is a nearly extinct language from Colombia. While originally from the Yari River, most of descendants now live in the Sierra de la Macarena and do not speak the language anymore. As of 2008, the last speaker lived near the Guayabero River.
• Tolowa, the language of the Tolowa Native American tribe, is spoken by a few members located in the Smith River Rancheria, a sovereign nation, near Crescent City, California. Tolowa is part of the Athabaskan language family. One speaker remained as of 2008.
• Volow (or Valuwa) is spoken on Motalava Island, a part of the Republic of Vanuatu. The Republic of Vanuatu is located near the east coast of Australia. One speaker remained as of 2008.
• Wintu-Nomlaki is spoken by the Wintu tribe in California. The language has two dialects: Nomlaki, which is spoken along the Sacramento River south of Red Bluff, and the other is Wintu. As of 2008, there was one fluent speaker and several speakers with moderate command of the language.
• Yaghan is spoken in Chile, in the community of Villa Ukika on Navarino Island, located in the Magallanes Territory. As of 2005, the last remaining speaker and pureblood member of the Yaghan tribe was an elderly woman named Cristina Calderon.
• Yarawi (or Suena) is spoken in Papua New Guinea, near Morobe town in Morobe Province. One speaker was documented in 2000.

–The Christian Science Monitor
Sources: Unesco Interactive Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger and the Encyclopedia of the World’s Endangered Languages by Christopher Moseley.