By Tore Janson

 

Five to seven thousand languages are spoken on earth at present, but most are used only by a small number of speakers.There are now around 6 billion people. The sixty largest languages, in terms of numbers of speakers, share more than 4 billion speakers among themselves. That is, about 1 per cent of the languages are used by about 75 per cent of the speakers. The remaining languages all have less than 10 million speakers.

 

Quite a few of the small languages are losing speakers at a rapid pace and may be extinct soon. An even larger number show signs of weakening and may become seriously threatened later on.

 

As has been amply demonstrated above, languages are not intrinsically stable. At any given time some languages are emerging, and others are disappearing. What is happening right now, however, is of an order of magnitude beyond anything that has occurred earlier. It was pointed out in the beginning of this book that in the Neolithic period there were probably very many small languages, and almost certainly no large ones. In the last three millennia there has been a steady development towards larger languages, but they have always coexisted with several thousand small ones. Nowadays almost all small languages are subjected to pressure from larger languages, and that pressure is growing steadily. As a result, languages are disappearing fast already. There are several indications that this process is accelerating and that within a few generations there will be many fewer languages than now, in spite of the fact that the number of people on earth will continue to grow.

 

The small languages have few speakers, by definition, and in most cases those speakers lack economic influence and political clout. For this reason not much is heard about the plight of small languages in most parts of the world. Some linguists are aware of the situation and try to inform the public, but in general this important process is going on practically unnoticed.

 

What disappeared in East Sutherland was one form of Gaelic, not all Gaelic. It was a form that deviated considerably from other Gaelic, so that it is not obvious whether it was a separate language or a dialect.

 

In that case, the development was in any case a part of a more general process that leads to loss of a language (or perhaps languages). The speakers shifted to English, not to another form of Gaelic. This was in line with what is going on in other areas of Scotland, and the eventual result will probably be that all forms of Gaelic are extinguished and English takes over completely.

 

The loss of dialects in favour of a closely related standard language is another process, which is also quite important at present. Languages with a standard written form and many speakers, like English and French, often comprise a number of quite deviant dialects, particularly in rural areas. Some of these dialects may have developed more or less independently for a very long time. However, for more than a century now the dialects of large European languages have been experiencing considerable influence from the standard languages. Almost all rural dialects tend to lose their locally developed words in favour of items from the standard language. Pronunciation may still be markedly different.

 

The fact that dialects tend to disappear or at least to become more similar has partly the same causes as the disappearance of languages. Schools, the mass media, and generally improved communications and closer contacts are all in favour of the large standard language. Still, to change a dialect is a much less dramatic shift than to shift to another language, and the effort involved is much smaller.

 

With these few words we leave the subject of dialects, although they provide a fascinating study. It should be noted, though, that new dialects surface just as old ones fade away. But that could fill another book; the rest of this chapter deals only with radical language shifts.