Languishing languages: Cultures at risk 

 Earth's inhabitants speak some 6,000 different languages. But within the next century, 90 percent or more of that linguistic diversity -- all but 250 to 600 languages -- will probably disappear, says Michael E. Krauss, director of the University of Alaska's Native Language Center in Fairbanks.

 This trend may facilitate communications between different peoples. However, it also threatens to erase forever aspects of the cultural identity of the tribes or ethnic groups affected, he and other linguists argued in Atlanta last week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Indeed, Krauss likened linguistic diversity to a cultural ecosystem -- a "web of life" inside which distinct social groups have evolved, each articulating its "different way of seeing the universe."

 Language not only assigns names to objects and abstractions, it also reveals the importance a particular culture places on kinship and other relationships between individuals, observed Kenneth Hale of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Some languages he has studied also suggest subtle, but potentially important cultural distinctions, such as whether a tree is considered animate.

 Hale, whose research has taken him around the globe, has the dubious distinction of having studied with speakers of eight now-extinct languages.

 Leanne Hinton of the University of California, Berkeley, studies a host of dying tongues much closer to home. Of North America's roughly 250 Native American languages, perhaps 25 percent are spoken in her state -- placing California behind only New Guinea and the Caucasus in linguistic richness.

 However, none of California's native languages is being taught to children or used in daily conversation, she reported. Moreover, the vast majority of the state's roughly 50 extant native languages have 10 or fewer fluent speakers -- all of them age 70 or older. Of these languages, 18 linger in the memory of just one to four elders. A 19th -- northern Pomo -- succumbed 3 weeks ago, with the death of its last speaker.

"This happens at least once a year now -- that a California language goes extinct," Hinton says. Despite this dire outlook, several promising efforts may postpone the extinction of others. Over the past 2 years, a few tribes have launched language-immersion summer camps lasting up to 2 weeks, she says. And several others, including the Yowlumni and Hupa, plan to "set up a preschool where their language will be the language of instruction."

 Those most passionate about developing such programs are young adults, she notes. But "they aren't the ones who speak the language." So she's helped develop a master apprentice program that has paired 30 young language activists with 30 tribal elders. The young men and women spend at least 20 hours a week speaking the dying tongue with a relative.

 The 2-year-old program, which involves 10 California tribal languages, has just obtained a federal grant to sponsor five more apprentices this spring under the newly funded 1990 Native American Languages Act. This law makes it "the policy of the United States to preserve, protect, and promote . . . Native American languages."

 Hinton also described preliminary plans for a conference this summer at which members of California tribes with extinct languages might begin studying recordings, a dictionary, and documentation of their forgotten language's grammar. "Their goal," she says, "is to speak the language again."

 But that's probably impossible, she concludes. Today, California's native languages hold on only as second languages. And adults who learn a second language not only tend to retain a foreign accent -- in this case, English -- but also to employ simplified, often faulty grammar and to import words from their first language. "So if any of these ever became first languages again," she predicts, "they would be new, somewhat mixed languages."