The Linguist’s Calendar: August 10

Hoxie Simmons

August 10 

1963: The Oregonian language Galice becomes extinct with the death of its last speaker Hoxie Simmons.

 

EXTRA for today from Mikael Parkvall's Limits of Language:

RAPID LANGUAGE DEATH

Sometimes, languages die not because their speakers desert them, but simply because their speakers die, and in such cases, language death can of course be even more drastic.

One well-known case is that of the Californian language Yahi. The number of Yahi dwin­dled from 1 900 in the mid-1840s, when the gold rush began, to about 100 two de­cades later. In 1912, Ishi, the last speaker of the language was encountered, and after ha­ving been donated (sic) to a museum, he became quite famous. But since his death in 1916, the language is completely extinct. California was the linguistically most diverse re­gion in North America, and in 1800, this state alone contained about 100 languages. Half of these still have a few elderly speakers, but not a single one is learned by children, mea­ning that the pre-Columbian languages of California will soon be completely extinct.

Ishi—the last speaker of Yahi

Another example of this is the Kwakiutl of British Columbia, who were decimated from an estimated 19 125 in 1786 to a mere 1 039 a century and a half later. Today, only a few hundred speakers remain.

In South America, the Amazonian language Júma had 300 speakers in 1940, but in the 1990s, their numbers had dwindled first to seven, and then to a mere four in 1998. The language is obviously facing extinction.

Even more dramatic is a case from the rain forests of Ve­ne­zuela, where explorers unknowingly brought with them an in­flu­enza virus while passing through a small village on the banks of the Coluene River. Less than ten people survived the tra­gedy, and with them, the Trumai language fell into desuetude.

For similar reasons, another South American language, Bora, saw its number of speakers falling from 15 000 in 1915 to a mere 427 twenty-five years later. It did not die out, however, but partly recovered, and now has almost 3 000 users.

The case of Tamboran is even more extreme—indeed as dramatic as language death can possibly be. In 1815, a volcanic eruption on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa killed every single speaker of the language.

Again in South America, the number of Nambiquara speakers was estimated at about 20 000—50 000 at the beginning of their contact with western civilization in 1911. Gruesome epidemics had by the mid-20th century reduced this number to 500. The current number is above 800, and even though knowledge of Portuguese is improving, children still learn their ancestral tongue.
These examples could be multiplied, but the most well-known, and one of the most spectacular examples of genocide-related language death, is that of the language or languages of Tasmania. The island is thought to have had about 4 000 inhabitants when the first Europeans arrived. The British began settling the island in 1808, and twenty years later, an organized genocide began, as the governor declared war on the Aborigines. Martial law allowed anyone to shoot and kill natives found in settled areas, and ethnic cleansing was taken one step further as chains of people swept across the island looking for survivors. In 1835, thus after less than three decades, the Aboriginal Tasmanians were virtually annihilated, and in 1847, only 47 survivors were left. The British, on their part, had suffered 183 casualties.

Today, a couple of thousand Tasmanians claim aboriginal descent, but they are of mixed origin—the reputedly last full-blooded native Tasmanian died in 1876. In any case, the Tasmanian language or languages are long forgotten, and only poorly documented.