[Indistinct Whispering] Around the age of eight or nine, I discovered I had a somewhat irrational interest in the world's languages. [fire blazes] [Bollywood music] [music continues] [chalk on chalkboard] A linguist is a scientist who studies language; not just to learn the languages.... >>The word for some is [indistinct], which means: eye of the sky. >>....but to figure out the possible ways that the human mind can make sense of the world around it. [typing, indistinct audio] There are more than 7,000 languages in the world. People are usually surprised when they hear that number. >>So, you think you're talk's going to run long? The other thing that people are surprised to learn is that small languages are disappearing at the rate of one every two weeks or so. [light banter] >>Going to talk today about these areas, with concentrations of endangered languages; these are really places that we need to act immediately on. >>When a language is in danger, we worry that some kind of unique way of seeing the world could be lost. These are some of the languages that we're interested in documenting. We have to find the areas that are most in need. [Festival music] Areas with a history of colonization. Where a people came, imposed their will and their government and their language on the people. Languages get lower and lower status in a community. They are actively suppressed or at least, actively discouraged. [speaking in indigenous language] >>Often times it's young children making this decision to stop using the ancestral language. [Farmyard sounds] [cow moos] Then when those children grow up- the language is effectively gone. [music and indistinct chatter] What can we learn from these languages before they vanish? [speaking indigenous language] When people hear "Siberia" >>They shudder! >>They think snow and ice; but Siberia is inhabited. The first people that came from European Russia, came to exploit the native communities for money, resources, and things; and then later where waves of settlers. Russian is a killer language; it's the reason that native Siberian languages are being wiped out. >>That's nowhere! It's not near...anything! [laughter] >>People live there apparently. From there we're going to go up river to Ka-sha-noa [phonetically] which is not on the map, but people say it's there. [Russian folk music] >>David is a specialist in sounds and words and is an excellent language learner. He picks up languages like a sponge. >>Greg is the expert on verbs. He has looked at more verbs in more languages than anybody I know. We've been working in Siberia for six years or so, and we were looking for a new language to document. [Russian folk music continues] I can't wait for you to meet Boris, he's got these amazing notebooks up there in the lab. >>Tell him your excited to see those. >>I think they're from 1971-1972. >>Our first goal was to go to the Tomsk Laboratory of Siberian Languages. [speaking Russian] >>One of the least documented languages of Siberia we discovered is called: Chulym. Boris, the professor we met at the lab, opened a big, metal safe and we pulled out the last active research on Chulym. Someone had worked on Chulym in the 60's and 70's; so there had been a thirty-year hiatus, where no one has even visited the community. >>Some of the words she was looking for she didn't find- the word for "law", there's no entry. >>Thirty years is a long time for a language which is already losing speakers --you know --the majority of the fluent speakers are going to have died in those thirty years. [music] >>We were doing this on a shoestring- we had almost no information, we didn't know if there were two speakers left, or twenty speakers left- so I was in a bit of a panic. [laughter] We hired a driver to take us to Tegul’det, which is the first Chulym village we needed to visit . >>We need to find the town administrator. [indistinct Russian] [Russian] The Mayor of Tegul'det was a little bit gruff with us cause, of course, we were just foreigners that showed up randomly in his town. <<He didn't have anything nice to say about the Chulym people. We got a lot of negative comments, we just sort of, nodded and smiled politely. The mayor assigned Bossia [guessed spelling] a very big Chulym guy, to be our guide and driver. >>This is a guy whose 52 years old or so, >>and this is a community where we don't expect people who are 52 to speak the language at all. [Russian folk music] >>On our first visit to a community we want to take a kind of census and figure out how many speakers are there and what do they know. [speaking in Russian] >>Our first real speaker turned out to be very hard of hearing. [Russian] It's hard with a dying or endangered languages because most of the speakers are elderly. [speaking Chulym] >>He's lived here since 1961, that was our first sentence in Chulym. [door creaking] >>Our second speaker, alternated between shouting at us, and saying that she loved us. I wouldn't really call it a conversation. >>Yeah, it was a monologue that we got to listen to. [speaking in Russian or Chulym] >>She says you must be a Cossack. >>In order to study a language, you need speakers who can sit, and focus. [speaking in Russian or Chulym] After meeting our first two real speakers, we were a little discouraged. The third speaker that we were taken to meet, she was in her nineties. [Speaking Russian] She was almost completely deaf. The real revelation was our driver. [speaking chulym] He started talking in perfect Chulym; >>so of course we were like: [jaw drops]. Often people will deny knowledge of the language and later, turn out to speak it. Native Siberian children were sent to boarding schools, they were forbidden to speak their language by their school teachers. [engine revving] Historically, boarding schools have been an unmitigated disaster for indigenous languages. [indistinct talking] >>Boarding schools for tribal children, have existed in lots of areas around the world. [lake noises] >>I went to boarding school, if you were caught speaking your language you were punished. >>When I was about 3 month old my grandmother took me. She took me from my mom and dad when they weren't getting along too good; so she raised me, and that's all she spoke- the Chemehuevi >>His grandmother raised him, and through that time, that's all she spoke- she didn't speak any English, she only spoke Chemehuevi [tractor noise] >>[speaking Chemehuevi] [continues speaking Chemehuevi] So I just said my name and that I speak Chemehuevi language and I speak it to myself, cause there's nobody to talk to, all the elders have passed on and, you know, that's..... ......I speak to myself, that's it. Language is a great part of your culture, and a great part of identity of who we are as people. It's your breath that you take, without you language, you might as well be dead. >>There's a lot of words I forgot, but I'm getting help with it. [truck starts] These CDs, they're recorded from back in 1969. [English word and Chemehuevi equivalent] [children talking indistinctly] [child practicing English] [Bollywood music] >>We've visited the boarding school in India. [Bollywood music] There are kids from approximately sixty, indigenous minority groups. It's an efficient way to give them a good education. However, bringing all of these children to a central location, educating them in English, exposing them to the practice of the Hindu religion, does exert subtle, or maybe not so subtle, pressures on their identity as a tribal person. [general noise] >>This is where they're learning sewing techniques? >>Yes. [sewing machine whirring] [indistinct pleasantries] >>What subject is this? >>Mathmatics. [indistinct talking] >>We went to meet the Tribal students, to ask them what language did they speak at home. That would lead us, in turn, to go to those villages, >>Where is your villiage? Where is your home? and find speakers of endangered languages who would work with us. [speaking indigenous language] >>When I was nine and ten and eleven, I went through a series of trying to teach myself various languages. Norwegian, and Urdu and Albanian. Always at that age. [speaking indigenous language] As I got older, even professional linguists haven't heard of many of the languages I've worked on. >>Ho is not even the funniest-sounding North Munda language name- Birhor definitely beats that one. You practically can't have a language name that's more bad-sounding in English than "Birhor" [snickers] [traffic noise] >>We've become interested in the Sora language. [general noise] >>You need permission from the state government to go onto the Tribal lands. [indistinct chatter about purchases] >>It's not easy to get that access. [traffic noise] >>We know an Indian scholar, Dr. Manideepa Patnaik. [indistinct friendly chatter] >>Her father is the personal friend of many government officials, and like anywhere in the world, it matters who you know. >>This is permission to go to Tribal areas for research studies. [singing in indigenous language] >>One of the teachers that we met at the school was Mr Panda who teaches English and music. [indigenous singing continues] >>Question is, does he want to go? >>He wants to come, he wants to come. >>Manideepa decided to invite Mr Panda to help locate individuals who knew traditional Sora songs and dances. [Train whistle] >>Good, how are you? Ready for our trip? >>Our expedition consisted of David and myself- the linguists- Mr Panda from the Tribal school, Manideepa Patnaik, and her son who's eight or nine years old. [train noises] [soft singing in indigenous language] [child singing softly] >>The song lyrics, got our ears ready to listen to the Sora language. >>I recognized some interesting structures and, of course, that made me very happy. >>India is not an egalitarian society. You are born into a particular cast, a social group. [train noise] Tribals in India, because many of them are non-Hindu, they are oustside of the cast system- they're below it. These are areas that are restricted to outsiders. We have to have higher cast, educated Indian people responsible for us. There was a little but of nervousness. [train whistle] >>This is an area that's been reported to be heavily controlled by Naxalites. There was ten people killed, recently, not too far away; so we just have to keep our eyes open and our ears open and be careful of course. [hip hop music] >>The Tribal areas are areas where you find this insurgents. They hide out in different areas, it's not like they have a big, neon sign saying: Here are the Naxals! [shouting] Their ideology is sort of Robin Hood-like: take from the rich to give to the poor. [hip hop music] There have been instances where people have been targeted, and in fact, killed. [hip hop music continues] [raking and machinery noises] >>The Sora language has about 300,000 speakers. [indistinct noises and talking] Here in India there are a billion people, 300,000 barely registers on the radar. The Sora always have to learn and use other languages to communicate. [drums] >>We haven't brought enough candy for this village, have we? We were taken to our first Sora village. [more drums] As linguists, we're not there to study music per say; [various musical instruments] but Mr Panda went in and said, "We have some visitors who would like to see a musical performance. [singing in Sora] That was the signal for people to come flooding into the central square. [very upbeat music] [very upbeat music continues] Even though we had instigated the performance, they didn't seem to want to stop. It was probably about 100 degrees, >>people were drinking wine - I was drinking wine >>drinking was happening and drinking and hot sun can lead to- you know- trouble. [indistinct talking] >>You want to say something? [chattering crowd] [indistinct talking in indigenous language] >>Who is the head here in the village? [speaking indigenous language] >>Who is the oldest person? >>I want to give him a gift, is that ok? >>How much? >>I give him a thousand. Tell him that it's for everyone to share and, uh, it's from us- and we appreciate their... [trails off] [speaking indigenous language] it's for everyone to share, yeah. Gift-giving is one of the most highly regulated behaviors. >>He's not happy. We started an argument. As an outsider, you can never quite get it right. [indistinct arguing] Mr Panda is a Brahman, a high caste Indian, and that gives him a natural kind of standoffish-ness >>Their not happy about it.. >>from the communities that he's so interested in. >>Oh yeah, how much does he want? Okay, no problem. [indistinct arguing] We were counting on him to negotiate the very delicate situation, and it was a fiasco. [continued, indistinct arguing] The money was excepted after some protracted negotiations; >>So, he will be happy with 15,000? and then the dancing continued. [hip hop music] [video frozen- no sound] In contrast to Greg, who likes to look at data from hundreds and hundreds of languages, >>Near here? Where do you live? I basically focus on just a few languages - I like to live in the culture. >>Our Indian colleagues were fretting about me staying in a village. >>She wanted an Indian person there, and an Indian man in particular, and really, the only person in the crew that fit that bill, was Mr Panda. >>Perfect! It really isn't important to me, it is to David for some reason, so.... ...um...but... that's because I don't think he understands, really, what the situation here is. >>It's my duty as an Ethnographer. >>Everyone has to do what they're comfortable with-- when I was younger, I didn't care about things like the insurgent thing- that's not my life now, my life is: I have two children to raise and I just can't do stupid things. >>This is a phenomenal well -look at this- it's built like a fallout shelter, or something. >>I hope everything is fine, we're like, real close to the "bad" area here. [road noise] >>I was thinking that we should've tried hard to leave an hour earlier, we don't really want to spend too much time on the roads at night; that's when danger level increases. >>We were told there's a village just a couple miles up the road, and I could stay there. >>There's really nothing we can do about it. You just got to assume that we're going to be fine. [nature noises] >>There's signing and dancing- you hear the flutes up ahead? [indistinct talking and music] [music grows louder, cheering] >>We were immediately sucked into this mass of dancing people. [music continues] Not being much of a dancer of any style, it was a little hard to keep up with the... >>They seemed very pleased with your dance steps. [laughter] [music and cheering] >>The women have particular way of dancing where they lock arms around the waist and kind of flow in a side to side thing, and it was literally pulsating. It was like being in the mosh pit. >>Yeah, but we're not quite a dangerous as a mosh pit - >>not dangerous at all- it felt great! [music continues] [video frozen - no sound] >>I'm not just content to sit in a room interviewing a speaker of a language, you have to breathe it in- get out and dance with the people. You'll learn the language much quicker anyway. [crowd noises] [chicken clucking] >>I see, that's terrible. [indistinct talking] >>That's terrible. >>Good morning to all of you sirs. >>Was it comfortable? >>Very comfortable. You look very elegant today. >>Is that so? Thanks. >>Yes, it is so. >>Not a single, I don't have a single mosquito bite. >>Let's just set up outside, it's so dark in there, let's just set up here. >>Our first interview, with a speaker of Sora, was with a man, approximately 50 years old. [speaking in Sora] >>We like to use the language. Even when we only know a dozen words. Cause it's a little bit weird, having people with microphones, in your face. [music in the distance] >>It's a lot of music coming from the village. Can you count to ten for me? >>One, two three, test four, five, six, test. Ok, are we on? >>We are on, yep. >>We have this process of sharing information. This is what we call "elicitation", that's how you get a comprehensive, description of the language. [English word, then Sora word] >>You'd start the elicitation [video frozen - no sound] with basic things, we started with body parts. >>You move on to colors, and then numbers. [speaking English and Sora] >>His youngest son is twelve. When he said thirteen, he repeated the word we had just heard for twelve, and added the word one to it. >>It's the base 12 system? >>Yeah. [excited laughter] >>This is not usual, English uses ten as a base. >>Then we got to 30, and he said, "20-10". It's base 20 now. >>It's 12 - 20. >>Yeah. >>So that's a different base, that's a base 20 system. >>Now he's using 12 and 20 as a base; so, as he counts higher, which one is he going to use? Turns out he's going to use both of them; so you get to 32... [Sora] >>Our favorite number in Sora turned out to be ninety-three. >> It's a magnificent system; it keeps recycling at the 12. >>It was: >>That's how you say "ninety-three" in Sora. >>We think it's one of the most complicated numbers, that we might ever see, in the language of the world. We're scientists; >>we should try to figure out what these different ways of knowing math are before they all get flattened out and vanish. >>Yes, thank-you, thank-you sir. >>I don't see how you can justify devoting your research career to the syntax of French- [indistinct] a language with millions of speakers. >>When the skills that you posses could help document a language that is going to go extinct in your lifetime. [indistinct murmuring] [indistinct murmuring continues] [street noise] >>More than 80% of the plant and animal species that exist on this planet have not yet been named or described by western science- more than 80%. >>How many different types of medicinal plants does she have just here? >>It doesn't mean that those species are unknown to humans; it means they're unknown to western science. Our main focus in Bolivia was a language called "Kallawaya". [music] The Kallawaya are famous for their healing practices. Their language provides information about the medicinal uses of plants. >>Ten thousand of them. >>Right, ten thousand plants! Kallawaya is a language with under a hundred speakers. It's been small for centuries, but it's still around. >>Even with the colonial language, Spanish, continuing to expand, we wanted to find out what are the internal strengths of Kallawaya- allowing it to stick around. [street noise] >>Look at that awesome mountain. [music] >>Bolivia was one of the most linguistically diverse areas in the world. Canichana - that's gone, that was a language I spoke, it's extinct. We're watching the diversity go "poof". >>To get to the Kallawaya you have to go up and over a mountain pass. >>Through a windy, windy, incredibly dangerous mountain road. >>It's just a barren, rocky landscape populated by llamas. You keep going up and up and up; you get to Lake Titicaca. >>It's a big, big lake and bright blue. >>We hit a minor delay... [general noises] >>The first Kallawaya healer that we met was a man named Max Chura [guessed spelling]; and we just met him completed by accident. >>We told him what we were doing and he started giving a few Kallawaya words. So, we were definitely kind of salivating, like: "Yeah! We got to get this guy!" >>Serendipity strikes again! We meet the healer, on the road, coming towards us with his bundle. >>But Max told us he was busy; so we set up an appointment to meet him later; and then we went on our way; and it turned out to be a really interesting 48 hours. [hip hop music] >>We went to Waynatambo, which is a radio station in Bolivia. >>We are very interested in endangered languages and finding out what people are doing to keep their language alive. >>I won't lie, and when we were sitting there I didn't feel good at all. [rapping] I'd had no sleep that night and was feeling miserable. [cow chewing grass] >>We were camping along the shores of Lake Titticaca. [frustrated noises] >>It was really, really cold outside and I did not feel good. >>It's rapidly getting dark. [zipper] >>It was hard to enjoy the pristine beauty of the area when you're vomiting. >>The only things I care about are getting another hour of sleep, and having some kind of carbonated soda. I was getting really sick, but there's only a finite amount time here. >>His name is Jose >>Hola Jose, como esta? >>We encountered a 12 year old boy who said that his father was a Kallawaya Healer; so naturally that sparked our interest. >>Hey Will? >>Will Faulkner [guessed spelling] accompanied us, >>I think this kid's in a hurry. he's a linguistics major. >>Part of our mission is to train students to carry on this work. >>Okay good, okay great, okay, then we'll interview his father. [greeting each other in Spanish] [upbeat music] [English and Kallwaya] >>It became clear during the interview that this man didn't, in fact, speak Kallawaya. >>There was almost no words in there that were Kallawaya words- he had a couple at the end, but... >>He spoke only Quechua, which is the largest of the indigenous languages of the Andes. [pencil scratching on paper] [nature noises] >>It reminds me of something. >>Yeah, it reminds me of something too and I can't quite figure out what. >>By digging into the Kallawaya language... [speaking Kallawaya] ...we can find the medicinal knowledge possessed by the Kallawaya. >>That's our first flirtation with Bolivian, traditional healing; so down the hatch. >>This knowledge is incredibly valuable to humanity as a whole, and we really shouldn't be in the business of squandering it, or letting it just fade away, without documenting it. [upbeat Bolivian music] >>After we met our first person who claimed to be a speaker but wasn't; we were very excited to talk to Max. [upbeat, Bolivian music continues] >>You've ever seen "Head", the Monkees movie? It's like a Tour de Force in psychedelic absurdity. >>Americans are a little more time-frame oriented, and when we say we'll meet you at one o'clock, we mean one maybe one thirty. >>We had given money to Max because we knew that he was a speaker. >>Pay up, pay up my bet. >>Yo! How much did you bet? Ten billion Euros? >>I said five will get you ten, that he's not here. [laughs] Yep. Holy moly. >>The problem though is that we have so few speakers of this language, that we will ever have access to. We were a little impatient. All this work, all this travel, all - you know- getting ill. >>Well, what can you say? I mean how can that guy, with a straight face, think that that would be ok, you know? >>Yeah. >>We were waiting for him for hours. >>Hours that day, but weeks of preparation, to hear what he has to say. [footsteps] >>Even though we weren't there to study the rituals, we agreed to have him preform a ritual for us, before the elicitation. [indistinct murmuring] >>The Kallawaya, cast cocoa leaves; then try to read the patterns. [blowing] [speaking indigenous langauge] >>I mean, what can you say? He's right. [boat noises] >>In the race to document dying languages, time is not on your side. [Truck noises] >>We've had speakers tells us, "I wish you'd come five years ago. You could've talk to my uncle, my cousin. Why hasn't anyone taken an interest before? >>Greg, you're going to elicit. >>Bossia [guessed spelling], was a speaker. >>Once you meet the first speaker, then all the doors seem to open to you. [indistinct chatter and soft music] >>Anytime we interacted with the elderly speakers, Bossia would encourage them to speak the language by speaking with them as well. >>That was "Hello" >>You start small, you start asking for individual words, and then, eventually, they'll start giving you sentences, without you even having to ask for it. [upbeat music] [speaking in Kallwaya] >>He said, "My name is Max Churra." [guessed spelling] >>We didn't ask him for that. He gave a ten or twelve or fifteen sentence long story. [speaking Kallawaya] >>No where is there a short narrative or text that's ever been published or, as far as we know, recorded. >>So obviously we were like: "Yeah buddy!" That was fun! [laughter] [indistinct talking in indigenous language] [laughter] >>She doesn't believe us. >>We need to go back at least for two or three of these verbs, and get the negatives for them. >>Chulym's got all kinds of complicated structures. >>Anything can be a verb- so if you say, "I went out Moose hunting." In English you need a whole sentence, in Chulym that's one verb: >>If your view of the world's languages, was based on languages like English or Chinese, we'd say it has to be a set of individual words strung together in a sentence; and Chulym is a language that says, no you don't, you can make that one word. [indistinct] >>When we collect data, the rightful owner of this material is not the scientist; it's the community that produced it. [Chulym] So, we want to share it with them. [recording playing - laughter and Chulym] [Chulym continues from recording] [laughs] >>This can be a really amazing moment in the field. Many of these people have never heard their own voice on a recording, and they have never seen their own image in digital form. >>A lot of times people were abandoning these languages for the very reason that they feel that they're not useful in the modern world. [speaking Chulym] >>To see them represented in such an amazingly high-tech way, it really shows them that: well, maybe our language isn't so backwards after all, maybe I have a knowledge which really is special. >>Then you can disseminate the data to the community of scientists. [applause] >>Those are very different audiences. >>There's a thought in the academic community that: oh Kallawaya is not a real language, it's just Quechua. I was like: listen to this, if you speak Quechua, you know for a fact that this is not Quechua. >>If you'd like, we'll play a clip right now for you to hear. [recording of Max speaking Kallawaya] >>We were able to bring them a digital recording of a Kallawaya sentence. It's something that's never existed before; and it just drives home to people: Kallawaya is really unique(!) and they posses knowledge that's under threat. [indistinct murmurings] >>Max Churra [guessed spelling] was clearly an expert practitioner of Kallawaya healing rituals. [indistinct murmurings] >>Max prepared this amazing set of objects, llama fat and llama wool, [indistinct murmuring continues] cocoa leaves and llama fetuses, [more indistinct murmurings] [blowing] >>We didn't know what to expect, at all, really. [indistinct murmurings continue] [heartbeats] [silence] >>We've seen lots of rituals. >>It had all the core elements: the use of blood sacrifice, fire, and the empowered inter-mediator, in the person of the medicine man. [indistinct murmuring continues] >>Part of what makes a ritual effective, is that you couldn't perform what that person is doing. [indistinct] and so they garble the language; and they intentionally obscure it. >>The Kallawaya language couldn't possibly be only transmitted by memorization of the ritual, because it was virtually inaudible and in comprehensible. [music] >>No where in the scientific literature do they explain how this language has been transmitted. [general noise] [laughter] >>The normal way that language is transmitted is that the infant begins hearing language as soon as they're born; [indigenous language] and by age 7 or 8, they've acquired the language effortlessly. [indigenous language] Kallawaya is not that kind of language. Nobody learns it from birth. It's transmitted from adult males, to teenage males, to avail themselves of the medicinal knowledge. [speaking Kallawaya] [Kallawaya continues] This might be the key to the survival of Kallawaya. Their language provides their livelihood. [speaking Kallawaya] [indigenous language] >>That is something that we don't typically find. [CD being inserted into player] [speaking/teaching indigenous language] >>People are choosing to abandon their native language because, they perceive, that they'll have more economic advantages. [music] [general noise] >>It was really important to come back to the school at the end of the trip. [reading to students] We had seen where these school students come from. We had met some of their siblings back in the villages. [water gurgling] >>The school will provide a conduit for people to increase their economic standing. [traffic noise] [general noise] >>My head, you know, it's probably bigger than their heads- it fits me. [rustling] >>I'll grab this one [more rustling and footsteps] [gentle music] >>We want to thank-you for helping us; we've learned a lot, and we want to come back again and continue working on tribal languages. {speaks indigenous language] We hope that you will also continue to speak your own languages, and not give them up. [applause] >>Good luck with your exams. [music continues] [speaking in indigenous language] >>Children don't have to give one language in order to speak another one. [practicing English] But none the less, once they've made the decision, it tends to be irreversible. [soft music] >>Chulym is a language that doesn't have a writing system. >>The vast majority of endangered are, in fact, unwritten. >>Interestingly, Vasya, who is our youngest and most fluent speaker, he had already invented his own writing system, using Russian letters. [music] [indistinct] [speaking in indigenous language continues] [soft music] >>The children drew some really nice pictures for us; [soft music continues] and we've got the text in Chulym. We just put that together and we'll have the first book published in Chulym. >>Chulym story book- and it will be a true community project. >>We're looking for Chulym surnames, Chulym names on the tombstones. [soft string music] >>That's one, that's a Chulym grave. [soft string music continues] >>It's hard to really explain the satisfaction you can have watching people reconnect, in essence, with their history. >>Their past. >>Yeah. [soft string music] [soft string music continues]