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July - 2007Knowledge of Aboriginal languages in decline
By Cheryl Petten
Windspeaker Staff Writer
OTTAWA
A paper released by Statistics Canada in May paints a bleak picture of the future of Aboriginal languages in Canada, reporting that more than 75 per cent of Aboriginal people in the country are unable to conduct a conversation in an Aboriginal language.
According to Aboriginal Languages in Canada: Emerging Trends and Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition, only 24 per cent of the people who identified themselves as Aboriginal in the 2001 Census indicated they could speak or understand an Aboriginal language, a drop from the previous Census numbers in 1996, when 29 per cent of those declaring themselves as Aboriginal indicated they could converse in an Aboriginal language.
The picture is even more discouraging when the number of Aboriginal people declaring an Aboriginal language as their mother tongue is examined. In the 1996 Census, 26 per cent of Aboriginal people reported the first language they learned was an Aboriginal language. Figures from the 2001 Census indicated only 21 per cent of people declaring themselves as Aboriginal reported having an Aboriginal language as their primary language.
The paper, released by Statistic Canada on May 15, was prepared by Mary Jane Norris, a senior research manager with Indian and Northern Affairs Canada's research and analysis directorate.
"Aboriginal peoples ... are confronted with the fact that many of their languages are disappearing, an issue which may have profound implications," Norris states in the paper. "Over the past 100 years or more, at least 10 once-flourishing languages have become extinct."
One bright spot among Norris' findings is that, while the number of Aboriginal people whose first language is their traditional Aboriginal language is in decline, a growing number of Aboriginal people are learning Aboriginal languages as a second language.
According to 2001 Census figures, the number of Aboriginal people indicating they spoke an Aboriginal language was slightly higher than the number indicating an Aboriginal language was their mother tongue. Norris interprets the difference between the two numbers represents people who have learned an Aboriginal language as a second language.
These second language learners may mean the difference between survival and extinction for some Aboriginal languages, Norris points out. For example, fewer than 200 people currently claim the Tlingit language as their mother tongue, but the number of people who have learned to speak Tlingit as a second language is about twice that. Some of the Salish languages are experiencing a similar resurgence-although the number of people speaking some of the smaller Salish languages as their first language declined five per cent between 1996 and 2001, the number of second language speakers increased by 17 per cent during the same time period.
"In fact, among some of the most endangered languages, second language speakers account for over half of the speaking population ... Similarly, among practically all of the endangered languages, as well as many languages considered to be 'not quite viable, approaching endangered' or 'uncertain', a minimum of a third of all speakers are second language speakers." Norris stated.
"Learning an Aboriginal language as a second language cannot be considered a substitute for learning it as a first language," Norris writes in the paper. "Nevertheless, increasing the number of second language speakers is part of the process of language revitalization, and may go some way towards preventing, or at least slowing, the rapid erosion and possible extinction of endangered languages. Indeed, the acquisition of an Aboriginal language as a second language may be the only option available to many Aboriginal communities if transmission from parent to child is no longer viable."
A number of factors have come into play that have prevented many Aboriginal people from learning an Aboriginal language as their first language, Norris said. Traditionally, Aboriginal languages were passed from generation to generation, with parents teaching their language to their children. The residential school system, where students were often forbidden from speaking their traditional Aboriginal languages, played a role in disrupting the intergenerational transmission of language, Norris explained, as did the growing prevalence of English and French in the daily lives of Aboriginal people, linguistic intermarriage, and the increase in migration of Aboriginal people between Aboriginal communities and urban centres.
"These pressures and demographics increase the likelihood that a significant share of the next generation of Aboriginal language speakers will be second language learners," Norris concludes. "Most importantly, though, it will be the desire and interest in learning Aboriginal languages today that will help shape the growth of future generations of Aboriginal language speakers, both first and second language learners."
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