Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (SOCHUM)

Revitalization efforts can take a number of different
One way to save a dying language is to send linguists to document
and record the language, so it will live past the death of its last
speaker.
forms, but they all seek to combat one of the many
causes of language endangerment, whether it be
the attitude of the population toward the language
or the lack of official domains in which the language
is used. The most common revitalization efforts
are in education. Language-in-education planning
efforts aim to increase the number of speakers of
an endangered language by holding classes for
children and adults. The most effective, but also most
complicated and expensive, educational initiatives
involve the insertion of an indigenous language in the
general education of children; this can take the form
of a bilingual program or even complete language
immersion. One of the most successful educational
initiatives has been the implementation of “language
nests,” which began with the Hawaiians and the
Maori of New Zealand and have since spread across
the world. In a language nest, old and retired speakers
of the endangered language run a preschool that
operates completely in the indigenous language, a
system that allows the language to skip a generation
of parents that may not have acquired it. 93
Revitalization efforts can also aim to increase
the prestige of an indigenous language, as negative
attitudes toward a language can be a major cause of
endangerment. One way of increasing a language’s
prestige is to secure official recognition from
governments and intergovernmental organizations.
Many endangered languages would benefit greatly
from official recognition, which would allow the
language to be used in more public domains
and would lead to greater funding for language
revitalization efforts. 94 Official recognition would also
lead speakers and nonspeakers to think more highly
of the language in comparison to others. 95 Such
recognition can come in the form of increased political
autonomy. In 1979, for example, when Greenland was
granted home rule by Denmark, Greenlandic was an
endangered language; it is now considered one of the
only safe indigenous languages in North America. 96 in
addition, increasing the economic prosperity of the
speaking population and giving the population more
employment opportunities in its mother tongue
would likely help save an endangered language by
increasing speakers’ regard for their own language,
prevent them from switching to a dominant language
for professional reasons, and provide resources for
language protection programs. Such an effect is
evident in the Ayas Valley of northern Italy, where
the change from an agriculture to tourism-based
economy has provided the impetus and the funds for
a trilingual education program in Italian, French, and
the endangered Franco-provençal dialect. 97
Even if a language has lost all of its speakers
and is considered dead, it may still be possible to
revive it. Assuming that the language has some
documentation, linguists and activists can use these
written materials to teach themselves, and others,
the dead language. One prominent example of this
language reclamation is the Wampanoag language
of New England in the United States. The last native
speakers of Wampanoag died in the mid 19th century,
and the language was lost for over six generations. In
1993, a member of the tribe founded the Wampanoag
Language Reclamation Project, and in the past twenty
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