Language loss threatens biological diversity they encode

Evidence

As Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine (2000) point out, there still exist across the planet at least 5,000 different languages that correspond to different cultural systems and also to specific bioregions where they originated. Many of these cultures depend primarily on oral language rather than written forms of literacy, to pass on knowledge about the “place” where they have lived for generations. Thus, as we pointed out in Chapter 2, there is an important relationship between linguistic, cultural, and biological diversity that creates different maps or ways of seeing and behaving relative to the natural world as well as toward other humans. As many of these 5,000 languages across the world are threatened by the demand for adopting particular languages as global languages—English especially—so too are the diverse cultural knowledges and the biological diversities they represent and protect. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 471

Categorization

• XREF: Connects linguistic-cultural-biological diversity to chapter 2 treatment and the polyad’s land/cultural-commons threads. — connects to: Most North American Indigenous languages will be extinct by 2050 — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 679; Indigenous languages encoded moss distinctions that English collapses into one word — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 423; Language death can narrow an entire people’s worldview to nine speakers — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 180

Broader Connections

• Indigenous languages encoded moss distinctions that English collapses into one word #exemplifies (0.95) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 423