Applied Languages

    Posted by Jaiken Struck on February 24th, 2009

The world is losing languages at an alarming rate, a United Nations agency reported Thursday, with thousands of tongues expected to disappear by the end of this century. Yet amid the losses, one community – the Basque people, who live in the mountainous region of southern France and northern Spain – is reviving a language that many once feared would die out.

In St. Jean de Luz, a seaside town near the Spanish border at the western edge of the Pyrenees, efforts are under way to revitalize the Basque language, which 30 years ago was rarely heard outside mountain villages. Among a population of about 3 million in the Basque region, which comprises seven provinces in Spain and France, an estimated 700,000 people speak Basque today. Bilingual signs dot the roads and mark storefronts, and an annual festival celebrates the Basque language, music and culture. Public and private schools full of children and adults learn Basque.

Fabienne Perrin, a 37-year-old woman employed by the local tourism office, grew up speaking Basque in a small mountain town a half-hour’s drive from St. Jean de Luz. She recalled that her grandfather spoke only Basque, never French. Now, though, “the generation that spoke only Basque is gone,” she said. “To work, you have to speak French.”

France recognizes Basque as a distinct regional language – the departmental government has an office dedicated to the Basque language – but Basque doesn’t have official status in France, meaning that it can’t be used in a court of law, for instance. On the Spanish side of the border, Basque has been one of two official languages in the Basque autonomous region since 1979.

As successful as this region has been in preserving its unique language, however, others aren’t as lucky. The language report, released by UNESCO, the U.N. agency based in Paris, provides vivid detail of the linguistic diversity that still exists in the world – more than 6,000 languages are spoken on the planet – and the threats that it faces. India, the United States, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico have the greatest linguistic diversity, it says, but also the greatest number of languages at risk. Among 2,500 endangered languages in the agency’s online atlas, 538 are classified as “critically endangered.”

Beyond Basque, which UNESCO labeled “unsafe,” the agency notes that some endangered languages can be saved through a combination of government intervention and community will. Welsh, for instance, has made a comeback in the past few decades after nearly dying out when Wales was exclusively under English rule. UNESCO’s most recent estimate of Welsh speakers: 750,000.

Read more: KansasCity.com

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