Tag Archives: linguistic genocide

Module 2:5 – Terralingua

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http://www.terralingua.org

Terralingua is a group of academics and activists who study biocultural diversity – diversity of plants, animals, and nature as well as cultures and languages – and work towards building awareness of the importance of maintaining it. The Downloads section under the Publications tab has interesting articles such as “Biocultural Diversity & Sustainability”, and “Indigenous and Traditional Peoples of the World & Ecoregion Conservation Booklet.” There is also a link to a book co-published by the WWF, UNESCO, and Terralingua called Sharing a World of Difference: The Earth’s Linguistic, Cultural and Biological Diversity (2003). Their work is focused on educational initiatives, policy development, and documenting biocultural diversity.

Module 2:4 – Murder that is a threat to survival

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http://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/mar/22/tefl3

In looking for something to post about ethnobotany or linguistic genocide, I came across this short and simple Guardian newspaper article by Tove Skuttnab-Kangas. To quote from the article:

 “threatened languages store the knowledge about how to maintain and use sustainably some of the most vulnerable and most biologically diverse environments in the world. It has taken centuries for people to learn about their environments and to name the complex ecological relationships that are decisive for maintenance of biodiversity. When indigenous peoples lose their languages, much of this knowledge also disappears: the dominant languages do not have the ethno-biological and ethno-medical vocabulary, and the stories will not be translated.”

Skuttnab-Kangas says that just as the loss of biodiversity is a threat to our survival, so is the loss of linguistic diversity—monocultures are vulnerable. The author claims that the biggest weapon we have against linguistic genocide is to enshrine rights to education in the mother tongue much more strongly throughout the world than is currently practiced, and also to raise awareness about the great risks of language loss.