Saving dead languages ⏲️ 6 Minute English

Hello, this is 6 Minute English from BBC

Learning English. I'm Neil

  and I'm Phil. And now that we've done our hellos,

let's hear some greetings in different languages from around the world.

But what do these languages have in common?

I'm afraid I don't know what they have in common

because I don't recognise any of them.

Well, sadly, the one thing uniting these languages

is that they're all endangered.

We often hear about animals at risk of extinction,

but a recent study by the Australian National University found that

out of the world's seven thousand existing languages,

half are under threat.

But what can be done to save languages from dying out.

That's what we'll be discussing in this programme

and as usual, we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well.

But first,

I have a question for you,

Phil, and it's about a country which used to be one

of the most linguistically rich places on earth,

Australia. Before European settlers arrived in the 1800s,

Australia had over two hundred languages spoken by

the native Aboriginal people who had lived there for thousands of years.

Many Aboriginal languages were destroyed by

the brutal laws of the Australian government at the time.

However, some survived.

So, which of the following Aboriginal languages is still spoken today

is it a) Djinang

b) Alawa

or c) Gagadu?

I'll guess it's Djinang.

OK Phil, I'll reveal the answer later in the programme.

The sad truth is that

it was no accident that the Aboriginal languages died out,

given the cruel treatment of Aboriginal people.

Children were removed from their mothers

and sent to schools thousands of miles away to learn English, and even today

Aboriginal communities experience racism and poverty.

Another aboriginal language,

Barngala, officially died in 1960

when its last native speaker, elder Mooney Davies passed away.

But Barngala has been brought back to life.

And today, it's spoken between parents and children and even learned in school.

So, how did a dead language with no living speakers come back to life.

The unusual answer involves a dictionary and a professor of linguistics.

Here's Professor Ghil'ad Zuckerman telling his story for BBC

World Service Programme,

People Fixing The World,

I had a dictionary, written by

a German Lutheran Christian missionary in 1844.

His name was Clamor Wilhelm Schumann, and he wrote the dictionary

with up to 3500 words, which is a lot,

because he wanted to Christianise

the, in quotation marks, "heathens".

So, it's a topsy-turvy righting the wrong of the past by using

a tool, written for one goal in order to achieve

the diametrically opposite goal.

Professor Zuckerman found an English-to-Barngala dictionary, written

in 1844 by a German missionary, a person sent

to a foreign country to teach their religion to the people living there.

Christian missionaries used the dictionary to teach English

to what they called Aboriginal "heathens".

'Heathen' is an old fashioned word for someone who belongs to no religion

or to a religion that is not Christianity, Judaism or Islam.

Professor Zuckerman puts the words 'heathen' in quotation marks.

The phrase 'in quotation marks' is used to show the actual words,

someone else has written or said

but here the phrase is used ironically. Professor Zuckerman

is questioning the real meaning of the word 'heathens'.

He is signalling that he doesn't think Aboriginals are heathens

at all - a bit like adding a wink at the end of a sentence

so people know you're not serious.

What is ironic is that Professor Zuckerman used the missionary's

dictionary, not to spread Christianity

and English, but to save an Aboriginal language from extinction.

So, he calls it

'topsy-turvy', meaning upside down.

Professor Zuckerman also says he is 'righting the wrongs of the past'

a phrase which means doing something to correct

a historical injustice from the past - in this case,

the destruction of Aboriginal language and culture.

Speaking your own language is about more than communication,

it means knowing your roots and feeling good about yourself.

I think it's time you reveal the answer to your question, Neil.

OK, well Phil,

you guessed that Djinang was another living Aboriginal language,

which was the correct answer!

Right, let's recap the vocabulary

we've learned starting with 'missionary'-

someone sent to spread their religion

to a foreign country.

'Heathen' is an old-fashioned name for someone who believes in no religion.

The phrase 'in quotation marks' is used to show the actual words spoken

or written by someone else.

It can also be used ironically, to show scepticism, disagreement

or belief that a word is misused.

'Topsy-turvy' means upside down or disorganised.

If you 'right the wrongs of the past',

you tried to correct

a historical injustice.

Once again our six minutes are up. Goodbye for now.

Bye.