In the past few days, articles have surfaced on news sites like CNN and Reuters regarding the discovery of a new language in NE India - specifically in Arunachal Pradesh, a region which China claims as part of its territory too.
I could speculate on the reasons the team would say things like these - excitement at the serendipitous discovery of the language, garnering public support and maybe even funding? Maybe the whole 'novelty' of the language is how they're marketing the project, in addition to the sentimentality often associated with language documentation projects. I don't blame organisations like Enduring Voices for doing that - surely, funding is a main problem in this sort of work and part of a successful project is its ability to engage the (global) public and to spur its imagination.
The form of the articles seemed to follow the familiar structure used when talking about the discovery of a new species of animal (incidentally, close to 150 new species have been discovered in the Greater Mekong area).
Already knowing about the amount of diversity found among the world's languages and their plight, I couldn't help but find even the title a little sensationalist. Yeah sure, there's a new language, so what? Oh, it's on its way out? Again, what's new about that? It also didn't help that according to one language blog I follow:
The announcement this week of findings regarding a previously unknown language has shaken up the field of linguistics.
Seriously? I'm pretty sure the field of linguistics is already badly shaken by the current rate of language death on the planet. But this article appears to be from a non-journalist, simply commenting on the news reports.
Looking at the major articles again today, and couldn't really find the sensationalist element explicit in the writing. Beyond the title - the major role of which is to attract readership - the articles themselves present facts about the speakers, their living environment, the classification of the language in a non-gushing manner. The CNN article is also quick to point out that: "Like most languages, Koro is unwritten and transmitted orally" to readers who may not be aware that there are far more languages without a written tradition.
In contrast, the sensationalist elements in the articles, seem to come from the quotes from the linguists themselves. David Harrison says, "We didn't have to get far on our word list to realize it was extremely different in every possible way." He also writes that, "Koro could hardly sound more different from Aka." Finally, we have the statement: "Koro brings an entirely different perspective, history, mythology, technology and grammar to what was known before."
'Extremely different in every possible way'? 'Hardly sound more different'? 'Entirely different perspective'? What is this? If Koro was a language isolate spoken by a community completely isolated in a valley that had somehow been blocked off from the rest of civilisation thousands of years ago, then maybe. Heck, if it was an alien language from a different language I would embrace such hyperbole. But if it's one of the many Tibeto-Burman languages in the region facing extinction, then how could it be that different?
I could speculate on the reasons the team would say things like these - excitement at the serendipitous discovery of the language, garnering public support and maybe even funding? Maybe the whole 'novelty' of the language is how they're marketing the project, in addition to the sentimentality often associated with language documentation projects. I don't blame organisations like Enduring Voices for doing that - surely, funding is a main problem in this sort of work and part of a successful project is its ability to engage the (global) public and to spur its imagination.
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