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“Linguistic diversity and biological diversity go hand in hand,” says UZH linguist Balthasar Bickel. At first glance, he admits, this correlation seems curious. How the two are linked is one of the subjects contributing to the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Evolving Language that Balthasar Bickel is leading.
Research on parallels between linguistic and biodiversity started back in the 1990s. Since then, several studies have shown “that one of the main factors driving linguistic diversity is the diversity of species in the environment,” Balthasar Bickel says. One of the most compelling reasons for the connection is that when humans are surrounded by greater biodiversity, they have access to more resources for survival. This allows them to function in smaller groups and be less dependent on others. In turn, the formation of individual communities promotes the development of individual languages.
The link between language variety and the local ecology became even stronger when people settled and began to practice agriculture, NCCR researchers discovered. “When people were still foraging for food as hunter-gatherers, they were more flexible and adaptable. If the local ecology didn’t provide enough food, they moved to other places, operating in manageable groups and cultivating their own language,” Bickel explains. This meant that they weren’t necessarily obliged to cooperate with other (language) communities in order to survive. However, it was different when they settled and started growing their own food. Settling down made them heavily dependent on local conditions like rainfall and often affected by crop failures. It therefore became essential to trade, barter and work together with other (language) groups – and this required a common tongue. Does the local ecology have a direct impact on language? If a people like the Innuits are constantly surrounded by snow, will they also develop several terms for it? “No, this phenomenon is more a matter of building a specialized vocabulary, just as hunters or artisans, for example, have developed specific terms for what they do,” Bickel replies.
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Even if English spreads like an invasive plant, the human urge to differ remains.
In fact, the ecology-language connection is an indirect relationship. In more specific terms, regions that are species-rich enable more groups, even small ones, to survive relatively independently of each other. A prime example of this are tropical rainforests – where the variety of species and variety of languages per square kilometer are both very high. At the other end of the scale is barren Siberia. Because the inhabitants need a huge catchment area to obtain enough food in these latitudes, the area is sparsely populated. As a result, the small settlement groups are obliged to cooperate with others in order to generate enough resources to survive – making language diversity correspondingly small.
“The linguistic diversity of a region can largely be predicted on the basis of its ecology,” Bickel says. The correlation is strong, as was discovered by a research team that he led a few years ago with UZH geographer Robert Weibel.
It’s for this reason that the greatest diversity of languages exists around the equator, where the consistently warm, sunny and rainy climate promotes biodiversity. Indeed, the country with the most languages in the world (839) is Papua New Guinea, home to a total of almost nine million people living in around 900 ethnic groups, each with their own language and culture. New Guinea also hosts the world’s greatest plant diversity, as a study by the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at UZH has shown. The fact that linguistic diversity is so strongly linked to biodiversity prompts many questions. The best way to approach them is like the hunter-gatherers of yesteryear: by walking with Balthasar Bickel from one fertile place to the next, picking the ripe fruit from the trees of knowledge on biodiversity and language variety along the way.
“Everything we know today about the evolution of Homo sapiens indicates that humanity was already striving for cultural diversity at a very early stage,” researcher Balthasar Bickel says. Among the earliest humans, differences can be found in the shape of stone tools or in the use of pigments. Soon, prehistoric humans diversified other forms of cultural expression such as housing, food and burial rites. And, at some point, language. “We can never know whether early Homo sapiens also differed in terms of language use because we don’t have the evidence,” Bickel says, “but everything indicates that efforts to diversify have always been part of being human.”
This urge for diversification seems to be instinctive – and in relation to language too, Bickel suspects. After all, when learning a language, young children pick up more than the language alone: they also acquire the specific worldview, communication rules and value systems inherent to their native tongue, which differ from those of other languages.
Now, not only has biodiversity been declining for some time but the world is seeing an acute drop in language diversity too. “It’s dramatic how quickly languages are dying out all over the world,” Balthasar Bickel says. The GlottoScope website states that of the worldwide total of 7,737 languages, almost two thirds are threatened with extinction or are no longer being passed on. Eurasia is particularly affected – but also southern Australia and North America, where the deliberate destruction of indigenous cultures has led to the extinction of many of their languages.
The loss of a community’s own language has dramatic consequences. When a group is deprived of its language, it loses a large part of its identity, its sense of belonging to a place, and familiarity with its peers, Bickel says. “The loss of a community’s language has the potential to cause massive social and psychological damage,” the linguist continues, “because language is an essential part of human identity.”
“Fortunately, languages continue to diversify,” Bickel adds. He cites the global language of English as an example: Scottish, Australian, American, South African, Indian English – they’re all audibly different from one another and signalize to which group the speaker belongs in the global language. Even if English spreads like an invasive plant, the urge to differentiate remains, Bickel believes. “Nobody can resist this urge.”
The linguistic diversity of a region can largely be predicted from its ecology.
But back to the acute state of language extinction. Can parallels be drawn with the extinction of biological species? Plant and animal species are dying out because their natural habitats are being destroyed – by humans. Across the world, we’re transfiguring natural environments as we clear and populate land, plant and fertilize crops, and build roads. And with small-scale farming being overrun by large-scale monocultures, even more species are put at risk.
Are large, dominant languages just as harmful to linguistic diversity as monocultures are to biodiversity? Are world languages partly to blame for the extinction of minority languages? Does it depend on the sheer number of new people speaking a language for it to gain ground? Are world languages driving out local languages as their reach spreads? “No,” Bickel replies, citing a global study on this topic: “The most important factor for a language to survive is school education.” This is because education is mainly conducted through language, and language is fundamental: without it, a range of different human traits and achievements wouldn’t develop at all, especially the awareness of personal identity.
Now, in most countries, a national language is taught at school that is not identical to the community’s everyday language. As Bickel sees it, this “high language” somewhat diminishes the prestige of the local language. But why then do Swiss German, Catalan, Norman, North Frisian, South Sami and numerous other local languages still thrive and not die out? “To keep a local language alive, it seems to be enough for everyone to freely switch to it outside of school hours. The local language would only disappear if the teachers and pupils – and the pupils amongst each other – spoke purely in the national language,” Bickel explains.
As long as the language in which people think and converse spontaneously is the local language, it remains dominant, while the national language ranks as the first foreign language. However, to illustrate how a national language can succeed in usurping local languages, Bickel refers to Nepal, a country on which much political and linguistic research has been conducted. Throughout the period of royal rule up until the 1980s, all nationwide bans on local languages failed – as did attempts to implement a national language by decree, despite beatings and arrests if people were caught speaking their local language at the market. It wasn’t until the rise of Nepal’s economic development in the 1990s that the local languages started to come under pressure: only Nepalese, the national language, was used in schools and in the media at this time – and access to remote regions was being developed. “The number one factor that causes languages to disappear is the construction of roads,” Balthasar Bickel says. If a remote area (an island is a particularly clear example) where people speak a minority language is connected to other regions by roads or railway lines, the local language community is fundamentally affected – as is the area’s biodiversity. This was the case in Nepal, where remote areas in which local languages predominated were connected to the national road network. As a result, Nepal’s linguistic diversity suffered a sharp decline.
Another example is provided by the mountainous regions of Graubünden, where languages of the Romansch family are spoken. In the 19th century, the region became accessible by transport, leading to the advent of tourism. As a result, the value of communicating in Romansch depreciated. Even the locals at the time realized the economic obstacle created by languages that no-one else spoke and eventually agreed to a replacement by German in schools, churches and governmental offices. According to the Lia Rumantscha website, it was only when there was a threat of Romansh dying out altogether that action was taken: in 1982, UZH Romanist Heinrich Schmid created Rumantsch Grischun as the official standardized Romansh language, and in 1995 the use of Romansh in schools, administration and public life was reinstated. Nevertheless, the threat of Romansh becoming extinct has not been fully averted. It remains a challenge for schools in Romansh-speaking regions to find the right balance between preserving the local Romansh languages and accommodating the all-powerful languages of German, Italian and English.
As new roads appear, it’s not just foreign speakers that arrive. Sooner or later – and whether intentionally or not – foreign plants and animals are brought in too, with species that can often be aggressive and potentially disruptive to local ecosystems. Once a diverse system has been compromised, restoring the balance through human intervention is time-consuming and challenging – a fact that is as true for linguistic diversity as it is for biodiversity.
This article is part of the UZH Magazin «Kostbare Vielfalt»