Uchebnik_lakhotyuk_mikhaylova

EHowever, if the evolution of the world's writing systems is traced back through time it becomes clear that nearly all of them originated from just four scripts: ancient Egyptian, ancient Mesopotamian, ancient Chinese, and ancient Zapotec from central Mexico.

FBut a series of extraordinary new archaeological discoveries have revealed Egyptian writings dating from 3250 ВС - between fifty and a hundred years earlier than the Mesopotamian script.

GAncient Egyptian hieroglyphs combined pictograms with logograms. But there is a problem with such a system - it requires a new symbol for every hew word and so rapidly becomes very complicated.

HWith it came the ability to keep administrative records and pass messages over long distances. This made it possible for central governments to organise large populations and economies. And of course it was also a means of passing on knowledge and literature between, generations.

14.9 Comprehension check.

1.What are thought to have been the four original scripts?

2.Which modern writing systems did they give rise to?

3.How many forms of writing do we know about?

4.How different are logograms from pictograms?

5.What is the alphabetic system based on?

6.Which is the earliest writing system according to the text?

It’s interesting to know!

Nowadays there is more-or-less consensus on a few points concerning the origin of writing. First of all, writing was invented independently in at least three places, Mesopotamia, China, and Mesoamerica. Recent discoveries might also provide evidence that writing was invented in Egypt and Indus independently of Mesopotamia.

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14.10 Render the text in English, using the words from the Word Lists above and Notes below.

НАЙДЕНЫ САМЫЕ ДРЕВНИЕ ПИСЬМЕНА, ВЫРЕЗАННЫЕ НА ПАНЦИРЯХ ЧЕРЕПАХ В КОНЦЕ НЕОЛИТА

могут оказаться самыми ранними написанными

надписи более чем на2 тысячи лет. Археологи утверждают, что они несут черты сходства со знаками, спользовавшимися тысячи лет спустя - во времена династии Шань (именно при этой династии - 17651027 лет до н.э. - как считается, и зародилась китайская письменность).

(США) и командой археологов из университета науки и технологии Китая в провинции Аншуй. Харботтл заметил, что нанесенные на панцири рисунки представляются осмысленными знаками, похожими на древнекитайские письмена. Среди них - символы, напоминающие знаки для "глаза", "окна", "8" и "20" в записях династии Шан.

Notes:

carbon-14 dating - радиоуглеродное датирование tortoise shell - панцирь черепахи

inscribe - написать на камне carve - вырезать

bear resemblance to - быть похожим

14.12 What’s your opinion?

o How do you think scientists can decipher ancient texts?

o How important is the creation of a writing system for people?

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(15) SAVING LANGUAGES

15.1 Vocabulary. Mind the pronunciation of the words below. Guess what they mean.

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15.3 Vocabulary. Vocabulary. Give Russian equivalents:

throughout history; according to the estimates; be judged by the standards; to gather comparative data;

to pass the language on to the children; a language is bound to die out;

a process is not likely to last; languages are seriously endangered; to get a language documented; computer-literate civilization; funding is available;

to compile grammars; to devote some effort; conditions vary;

decline towards extinction;

be intensively exposed to a language; be maintained by a system;

'language nests';

to face a difficult situation; a marker of one’s identity;

to introduce measures of revitalization; 'semi-speakers'

to revitalise an endangered language; be at the very brink of extinction; years of neglect and repression;

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a reviving language; political autonomy;

the creation of a unified written language; because of the negative attitudes by;

is more publicly available;

extinct languages can be resurrected;

SAVING LANGUAGES

(1)There is nothing unusual about a single language dying. Communities have come and gone throughout history, and with them their language. But what is happening today is extraordinary, judged by the standards of the past. It is language extinction on a massive scale. According to the best estimates, there are some 6,000 languages in the

world. Of these, about half are going to die out in the course of the next century: that's 3,000 languages in 1,200 months. On average, there is a language dying out somewhere in the world every two weeks or so.

(2)How do we know? In the course of the past two or three decades, linguists all over the world have been gathering comparative data. If they find a language with just a few speakers left, and nobody is bothering to pass the language on to the children, they conclude that language is bound to die out soon. And we have to draw the same conclusion if a language has less than 100 speakers. It is not likely to last very long. A 1999 survey shows that 97 per cent of the world’s languages are spoken by just four per cent of the people.

(3)It is too late to do anything to help many languages, where the speakers are too few or too old, and where the community is too busy just trying to survive to care about their language. But many languages are not in such a serious position. Often, where languages are seriously endangered, there are things that can be done to give new life to them. It is called revitalisation.

(4)Once a community realises that its language is in danger, it can start to introduce measures which can genuinely revitalise. The community itself must want to save its language. The culture of which it is a part must need to have a respect for minority languages. There needs to be funding, to support courses, materials, and teachers. And there need to be linguists, to get on with the basic task of putting the language down on paper. That's the bottom line: getting the language documented - recorded, analysed, written

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down. People must be able to read and write if they and their language are to have a future in an increasingly computer-literate civilisation.

(5)But can we save a few thousand languages, just like that? Yes, if the will and funding were available. It is not cheap, getting linguists into the field, training local analysts, supporting the community with language resources and teachers, compiling grammars and dictionaries, writing materials for use in schools. It takes time, lots of it, to revitalise an endangered language. Conditions vary so much that it is difficult to generalise, but a figure of $100,000 a year per language cannot be far from the truth. If we devoted that amount of effort over three years for each of 3,000 languages, we would be talking about some $900 million.

(6)There are some famous cases which illustrate what can be done. Welsh, alone among the Celtic languages, is not only stopping its steady decline towards extinction but showing signs of real growth. Two Language Acts protect the status of Welsh now, and its presence is increasingly in evidence wherever you travel in Wales.

(7)On the other side of the world, Maori in New Zealand has been maintained by a system of so-called 'language nests', first introduced in 1982. These are organisations which provide children under five with a domestic setting in which they are intensively exposed to the language. The staff are all Maori speakers from the local community. The hope is that the children will keep their Maori skills alive after leaving the nests, and that as they grow older they will in turn become role models to a new generation of young children. There are cases like this all over the world. And when the reviving language is associated with a degree of political autonomy, the growth can be especially striking, as shown by Faroese, spoken in the Faroe Islands, after the islanders received a measure of autonomy from Denmark.

(8)In Switzerland, Romansch was facing a difficult situation, spoken in five very different dialects, with small and diminishing numbers, as young people left their community for work in the German-speaking cities. The solution here was the creation in the 1980s of a unified written language for all these dialects. Romansch Grischun, as it is now called, has official status in parts of Switzerland, and is being increasingly used in spoken form on radio and television.

(9)A language can be brought hack from the very brink of extinction. The Ainu language of Japan, after many years of neglect and repression, had reached a stage where there were only eight fluent speakers left, all elderly. However, new government policies brought fresh attitudes and a positive interest in survival. Several 'semi-speakers' - people who had become unwilling to speak Ainu because of the negative attitudes by Japanese speakers

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- were prompted to become active speakers again. There is fresh interest now and the language is more publicly available than it has been for years.

(10)If good descriptions and materials are available, even extinct languages can be resurrected. Kaurna, from South Australia, is an example. This language had been extinct for about a century, but had been quite well documented. So, when a strong movement grew for its revival, it was possible to reconstruct it. The revised language is not the same as the original, of course. It lacks the range that the original had, and much of the old vocabulary. But it can nonetheless act as a badge of present-day identity for its people. And as long as people continue to value it as a true marker of their identity, and are prepared to keep using it, it will develop new functions and new vocabulary, as any other living language would do.

(11)It is too soon to predict the future of these revived

languages, but in some parts of the world they are attracting precisely the range of positive attitudes and grass roots* support which are the preconditions for language survival. In such unexpected but heart-warming ways might we see the grand total of languages in the world minimally increased.

* grass roots широкие массы

15.3 Comprehension check. Questions (paragraphs 1-5)

1.At what rate are languages becoming extinct?

2.What languages are more vulnerable to extinction?

3.What steps should be taken to stop endangered languages from dying out?

4.Is it possible to save all endangered languages?

15.4 Comprehension check. Paragraphs 6-11.

Match the languages A-F with the statements below which describe how a language was saved (1-5).

A.Welsh (валлийский язык)

B.Maori (язык маори)

C.Faroese (фарерский язык)

D.Romansch (романшкий; швейцарский ретороманский язык)

E.Ainu (айнский язык)

F.Kaurna [ga:na] or [gauna] (язык одной из групп жителей Австралии)

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1.The region in which the language was spoken gained increased independence.

2.People were encouraged to view the language with less prejudice.

3.Language immersion programmes were set up for sectors of the population.

4.A merger of different varieties of the language took place.

5.Written samples of the language permitted its revitalisation.

15.5 Render the texts (1-3) using the expressions below.

Useful words and expressions:

üare likely to vanish within two generations;

üreject the language of their parents;

üa crisis of confidence;

ülose faith in their culture;

üto promote national unity;

üto adapt to socio-economic pressures;

üsufficiently fluent to transmit the language to the next generation;

üthe accelerating pace of language loss;

üprovide the equivalent of DNA material that can be used to reconstruct languages, with all their cultural clues and connections;

üto instill one unified national language;

üto build a unified "national" identity;

üthe direct descendant of the Celtic language;

üto adopt a language;

ülacked any immunity, were immediately susceptible to the disease;

übrighter economic prospects;

übetter access to education, jobs and new technology;

ücontact between the users of the minority language and their more powerful neighbors;

üto reverse the fortunes of an endangered language;

üa language that was traditionally passed down orally from parent to child.

Как и почему вымирают языки

(1) Языки исчезали на протяжении всей истории человечества, однако в последние века наблюдается ускорение этого процесса. Между 1490 и 1990 годами около половины языков мира исчезло с лица Земли. Подсчитано, что при нынешних темпах исчезновения

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языков в двадцать первом веке около90% языков мира превратится в мертвые или умирающие.

Языки вымирают по-разному: коренные жители Тасмании, как и некоторые индейские племена Америки, подверглись жестоким преследованиям и были изгнаны из родных . местГораздо чаще местные жители умирали от болезней и пороков, завезенных белыми людьми - в некоторых индейских племенах Северной Америки настоящим бедствием стал алкоголизм, а в деревнях Амазонки все больше и больше распространяется кокаиновая зависимость. Вместе с распадом или уничтожением племенных общин исчезают их языки.

Однако главная причина вымирания языков менее драматична ,и возможно, более коварна. Переключение на другой язык происходит тогда, когда носители одного языка адаптируют язык большинства или язык, считающийся престижным. Наглядным подтверждением этого процесса, который проходит в течение всего трех поколений, служат испанские и другие иммигранты, живущие в США. Первое поколение является одноязычным и лишь немного знает основной язык. Второе поколение двуязычное: дети учат родной язык от родителей и говорят на основном языке на улице. Третье поколение употребляет основной язык и дома, и на улице.

(2) В процессе объединения Европы появились новые сведения о местных языках и культурах, которые стали основой для проведения кампаний по защите малых языков и по возрождению мертвых языков, которые должны использоваться наряду с национальным языком.

Когда языку перестают обучать детей, он считается умирающим и находится на пути к исчезновению, хотя человек может вмешаться в этот процесс и направить его в обратную сторону. Двуязычное образование в Уэльсе означает, что дети говорят на валлийском языке чаще, чем их родители. Изменилось отношение человека к языку, и процесс умирания был остановлен. С другой стороны, в Бретани (Brittany) не проводится подобная политика в отношении бретонского (Breton) языка, его престиж остается низким, и дети все реже могут говорить на нем. В результате этого валлийский язык является единственным кельтским языком, за чью дальнейшую судьбу можно не беспокоиться.

Желание повернуть вспять процесс перехода с одного языка на

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баскским или каталанским языками в Испании, так что в этом случае проблема языков носит скорее политический характер. Некоторые опасаются, что сохранение национальной самобытности народов приведет к конфликтам. Другие считают, что носителям малых языков лучше перейти на язык большинства; и хотя эти точки зрения не лишены доли истины, нельзя обрекать языки на верную смерть, поскольку впоследствии можно сильно об этом пожалеть.

(3) Возрождение языков Самым известным примером возрождения некогда утерянного

языка служит иврит. Этому процессу способствовало объединение евреев в государстве Израиль после Второй Мировой Войны. Иврит (Hebrew) (древнееврейский), на котором была написана большая часть Ветхого Завета, в течение многих веков не использовался для повседневного общения, однако выжил благодаря стараниям ученых и благодаря тому, что все это время он продолжал использоваться в качестве языка культа. С девятнадцатого века на иврите снова стали говорить в Палестине - члены движения, возглавляемого Элайзер БенИехуда (1858-1922), чей сын стал первым носителем современного иврита. После основания в1948 году государства Израиль ивриту

языки еврейской культуры, такие как германский идиш (Judeo-German)

и романский ладино.

Тем не менее, пример иврита показывает, что возрождение мертвого или умирающего языка реально.

Недавно удалось оживить умирающие окситанский(Occitan) и гасконский (Gascon) языки Франции и даже вымершие мэнский (Manx) и корнский (Cornish) языки Британии. Эти весьма скромные попытки свидетельствуют о том, что в Европе начался постепенный переход от централизации к регионализму.

14.12 What’s your opinion?

o Is it necessary, in your opinion, to save ying languages? Some people claim it’s like “embalming a corpse”.

o Comment on the Welsh proverb

“A nation without a language is a language without a heart”.

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