"Palenge a senda tielan ngombe ri nduse i betuaya."

"Palenque is the land of cattle, sweets, and basic staples."

What language is this? Looks like a cross between Spanish and some African language? Well it is. Also, add  Portuguese to the mix. In San Basilio de Palenque, Columbia, there resides a village that still speaks this pidgin like language Palenquero.  Palenquero came to be through the slave trade in Africa from Portuguese traders who brought African slaves to Cartagena in the 1600's. It was a language used by the slaves during the time. Palenque even translates in Spanish as the word for a fortified village of runaway slaves. But that is not it. This said last remnant of a pidgin language developed during the slave trade is dying. This wonderful, historic language is dying because of communication with outsiders. People are finding that they cannot get jobs speaking Palenquero because no one is able to understand them. Luckily, the Palenque people will not let their beautiful language lay to rest. Their language comes from strength and they believe that strength will live on no matter what.

Although, this article is from 8 years ago. I found the language pretty neat and closely related to the term pidgin language, which is a language based on different languages to further communication. I know Palenquero is not defined as a pidgin language but I feel as if it were language that evolved through a need for communication between uncommon people. On the other hand, this language was neat because of the history behind it. Creole languages are so beautiful and for it to have some tinge of Spanish makes it even more beautiful. It goes to show that a language with such roots will probably die out because of how the language hinders activities such as getting a job. Another classic underdog in a world full of power languages such as English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Hindi will die out simply because it no longer applies to this fast and ever changing world.

A Language, Not Quite Spanish, With African Echoes

Should the underdog(s) win in this match?

So, I was looking around the site langology and I happened to come across an article, "Language Policy in Spain." I have never heard of language policies before. I did some research through the web and found out about General Franco's policies on making sure the Spanish language does not dominate Spain. Franco used these policies to prevent regional languages, such as Catalan and Galician (which are languages I have never heard of until reading Lourenco's article), from going extinct. I thought to myself, "Weird." I mean, the regional government actually fined people for not communicating in the same language of that region. So I am thinking that this ordeal was great and slimmed the dominance of the Spanish language because I always root for the underdog! BUT the policies set by Franco caused not only conflicts within regions but on borders. For an example, no one knew which language to communicate with between the border of Aragon and Catalonia. Luckily, this policy has been regulated after reading a recent article by Fiona Govan, "Catalans protest 'return to Franco' as schools are told to teach more Spanish,"that talked about Catalan government balancing the use of Spanish language and regional languages. 

To think that language can be restricted for the well being of other languages is interesting and is something, again, I have never heard of before. I think policies on language could never work in the world because of globalization. Learning about failed language restrictions such as this one only teaches us that language is wild and cannot be contained.

Language, another endangered species perhaps?

In this article, staff writer at Science, Emily Underwood describes the reason why language is declining in the world faster than the most endangered species. There is a study that proves that economic development is the cause to the decline. Oddly enough, the very thing that has promoted globalization is slowly killing off languages such as Eyak in Alaska and Ubykh in Turkey. Weaker languages like Eyak and Ubykh are being dominated by mega-power languages such as English and Mandarin Chinese. English and Mandarin Chinese are the most commonly used languages in the economic world. With this known, many parts of the world are taking the hint and abandoning their language for those dominant languages.

Tatsuya Amano is the head of this study and used sources like Ethnologue (online repository) to determine out of the 6909 languages in the world, 649 of those languages will die off. Surely, Amano blames economic development but has scarce evidence to prove how economic development is the cause to language loss. This scarce evidence prompts Leane Hilton, a linguist at the University of California to say that economic development is not the only cause to language loss but factors like dominant cultures, disease, murder and genocide. Fortunately, there are revitalization efforts to help save endangered languages.

I found this article interesting. I researched about economic growth affecting languages a few days ago because in my Anthropology class we talked about how languages are growing but also are declining. The class agreed that economic development was because of it but I could not wrap my head around the language loss in a globalizing economy. I had always believed that learning another language was because it was needed in order to succeed but with scary studies like Amano's study I found that maybe language is declining because of how these dominant languages are taking over in the economic world.



Article: Languages are being wiped out by economic growth