Scores of Languages Just Disappearing

April 8, 2002 — -- Geneva Woomayoyah Navarro, 76, grew up translating English for her Comanche grandparents after their forcible relocation to Oklahoma, 5 miles from their nearest Comanche neighbor.

"My grandmother couldn't speak English or understand it," she explained. "So at mealtime she preferred that we would all speak [Comanche] so she could understand."

Like many in her English-speaking generation, Navarro later moved away from home in pursuit of education and jobs, marrying a non-Comanche in the process.

Now she is stunned to find that the language of her youth is dying. Fewer than 900 people, most of them elderly, are believed to speak Comanche.

That leaves Navarro with a deep sense of loss.

"Our language is our culture," she said. "It holds our culture together. It tells us where we are where we come from."

The Comanche story is not uncommon.

Half of approximately 6,000 languages currently spoken worldwide are endangered to some degree or dying out, according to a recent report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

In the United States, fewer than 150 Native American languages out of hundreds that once existed remain, according to UNESCO. And every single one is in some jeopardy, as are hundreds of other native languages in Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America.

The same is true for languages in locations as far-flung as Africa, Scandinavia, Siberia and Taiwan.

In Australia, for example, the Jiwarli language's last native speaker died in 1976, according to Peter K. Austin, a professor at the University of Melbourne. In fact, after decades of government suppression into the 1970s, dozens of Australian Aboriginal languages are just about finished, according to UNESCO.

"Many of the languages are becoming extinct during our lifetimes," said G. Aaron Broadwell, a linguist at the State University of New York at Albany, and chairman of the Linguistic Society of America's Committee for Endangered Languages and Their Preservation. "The last speakers are dying now."