Speech, language and genetics

THE HYDERABAD report about a gradual extinction of a large number of native languages should stir up thought on and the evolution of speech and writing from their hieroglyphic origins prior to their encasing of script over time. It could also take the trail to anthropology and genetics if one is looking for distinctive characteristics.

It is doubtful whether with all the advances made in linguistic research we could still get a clear description of how speech could transform itself by recording itself in scripts

There are only 17 to 20 speakers of languages like Alawa in Northern California with the last speakers of Eyak and Jiwarli, the 81-year old Marie Smith Jones and Mr. Jack Butler respectively dying in 1986. Manx became extinct in the Isle of Man in 1900 and the very small number of the speakers of the language reveals that the language had long ceased to be spoken widely.

While the names of these speakers in Northern California sound Anglo-Saxon, it is most likely that they are native American Indians who had stuck to their own languages even if they had learnt English. Manx was a Celtic language of pre-Roman Britain and if it could survive until 1900, it is a remarkable instance of linguistic longevity.

A figure repeatedly given about the dialects spoken in India is around 800 though it now appears that they may be well above this number. The Hyderabad report also draws attention to the languages, Agarya, Aimol, Andamanese and Angika - which very few would have heard of - becoming extinct in India. It is very unlikely that any of these languages had any script. They were spoken by communities which should themselves have been dying out.

Whether the extinction of communities explains by itself could account for the fading away of languages is, however, in doubt. If languages like Prakrit surviing in the stone edicts of Asoka ceased to be spoken over the centuries in spite of the existence of descendants of communities which had once spoken them while other equally ancient languages like Tamil have grown with a literary richness and vigour, one should seek other explanations.

There could be a smothering impact on a language from large scale invasions by races speaking other languages and the genetic mixture which this could lead to. The northern kingdoms of India had been repeatedly exposed to such incursions in the preceding centuries.

The language which is phonetically richer and sturdier survives after genetic or ethnic mixture of races and should have replaced other languages which were being spoken earlier. Such a replacement should have come in the wake of steady enlargement of human perceptions from primitive states of existence seeking a linguistic expansion from primitive communities to civilisations.

It is likely that the survival of a language as a lingering medium of communication and the growth of a rich literature depend very much upon its having developed a script which would steadily expand the number of its speakers and eventually the writers. This requires the evolution from a state of speech limited to a dialect to one of an acute awareness of the need to impart a lasting usage of it by capturing it in a script. Where this does not happen, languages spoken by communities which themselves are dwindling face the threat of extinction.

The fading away of the comunities which had been speaking these rare languages some of which are being resurrected by linguists has been partly attributed to the pre- modern agrariran societies in some regions of South America, Africa and also India rooted to land the productivity of which had been steadily declining and from which they could not tear themselves away.

While this is the state of affairs in matters relating to languages the survival of which is under threat because of the communities speaking them facing extinction, the computer is reducing even the modern languages which are widely spoken and well-developed to irrelevance.

Widespread resort to electronics in the civil and defence services calls for the transmission of large volumes of data in the forms to which they have to be reduced and to which even English as the most widely spoken international language has to subject itself and it has to wait for its rescurrection at its destination point.

The commanding position which English continues to enjoy as a languge of global communication did not help the U.S. commanders during the Gulf War and their automatic voice- transmitting equipment required the recruitment of battalions of speakers of Arabic.

Their exposure to global responsibilities has also revealed U.S. inadequacies in maters relating to languages. Robert D.Steele, U.S.intelligence expert, drew the attention of Washington about the handicaps faced by the U.S. in its being short of linguists while snooping for information from unfriendly and hostile non- English speaking countries.

This is attributed to budget appropriations which do not make the required provision for the learning of languages. The U.S. Weather Bureau had to seek out the Spanish-knowing Larry Seaquist to make him acceptable to an Argentine expedition.

Languages which are largely unknown as Gaelic to Provencal are now emerging from their antiquity and are invading television channels for the benefit of small linguistic groups not merely for entertainment and cultural support but also to wean them away from the secessionist groups in Europe.

The rebellion of anti-war groups as well as the separatists rebelling against the nation-state has often taken the form of their glorification of their language for demonstrating their exclusive and immiscible identities.

A very provoking study of two totally different cultures authored by J.B. Priestly and Jacquetta Hawkes in their Journey Down a Rainbow published in the late fifties was very revealing of the richness of one group and the decay of the other, the first one being the Hopi Indians of South America and the second of the Americans of the U.S. in New York, Washington and other cities.

To Jacquetta Hawkes, the ancient, rich culture of the Hopi Indians remaining untainted over the ages in their music, drums, dance and language could be seen from its sturdiness and a refinement which Priestly totally missed in the U.S. not merely because it was enslaved by Mammon.

As a student of anthropology, Priestly could not find another instance of decay when he saw the New Yorkers as a race which could be reduced to a state of nerve-racking excitement even by the most inconsequential. Giving an instance of this, he mentioned the build up of excitement in a theatre prior to the start of a play with the assembled audience feeling as though they were sitting on a bomb about to explode at any moment.

Though Priestly himself has not mentioned it, the impact of such a culture on the language spoken by the Americans has been the subject of interest for other writers. Though one of them was writing on the decay of spoken English in England, it could be as true of American speech as well.

The pace at which the crudeness of speech which was becoming more and more pronounced, he wrote, could make the English language in less than fifty years unrecognisable to those living today. It could be a case of a ``native language'' facing extinction in its own country.

C. V. Gopalakrishnan in Chennai

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