Indigenous rights

Question 1

Define language genocide

Answer 1

50% of languages will be extinct or seriously endangered by 2100

Most of the languages that will disappear will be indigenous

Question 2

Define language death

Answer 2

Languages just disappear naturally

There is no agent

Individual and collective responsibility

Question 3

Define language murder

Answer 3

Educational systems, mass media etc committing linguistic and cultural genocide
E.g. burning the literature

Even when shift occurs, what happens to the speakers ‘consent’

Question 4

Define a killer language

Answer 4

When a larger language is learned at the cost of the mother tongue

Question 5

UN International convention has 5 definitions of genocide

Answer 5

oGenocide committed with the intent to destroy, in whole, or in part a national, cultural or social group, as follows:
 Killing members of the group
 Causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members of the group
 Deliberately inflicting conditions of life that will result in physical destruction
 Imposing measures to prevent births
 Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Question 6

Language rights of indigenous peoples

Answer 6

• Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007, UN). Article 13,16 = use, pass on, and have media

Question 7

Define language vitality

Answer 7

Fishman’s 8-level Graded Integenerational Disruption Scale

Question 8

Define Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007, UN)

Answer 8

Article 13 = have a right to use and promote language in all forms
14 = educate in own language
16 = establish own media

Question 9

UN – concept of indigenous peoples

Answer 9

 a) Occupation of ancestral lands, or at least of part of them;
 b) Common ancestry with the original occupants of these lands;
 c) Culture in general, or in specific manifestations (such as religion, living under a tribal system, membership of an indigenous community, dress, means of livelihood, lifestyle, etc.);
 d) Language (whether used as the only language, as mother-tongue, as the habitual means of communication at home or in the family, or as the main, preferred, habitual, general or normal language);
 e) Residence on certain parts of the country, or in certain regions of the world;
 f) Other relevant factors.