'Indigenous languages are asleep, not extinct,' says Kokama linguistics researcher

[Judi Lynn]

Altaci Rubim, from the Kokama people, works to revitalize Indigenous language

Written by
Amazônia Real

Translated by
Fernanda Canofre

Translation posted 26 July 2023 19:26 GMT

This piece was written by Elaíze Farias and originally published at Amazônia Real's website, on April 19, 2023. It is republished here, with edits, under a partnership agreement with Global Voices.

The brutality against Indigenous people in Brazil has promoted not only the loss of their territories but also extinguished many original languages. There were over 1,000 native languages by the time the European invaders landed in the country in 1500. Today there are just more than 200, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). With the review following data from the 2022 Census, this number could increase.

In some cases, there are barely any speakers, with only one or two people keeping the language alive. But there are many ways to recover, revitalize and rescue an original people's language, even those considered to be extinct. Through rituals and contacts with ancestors, the so called spirit-languages can be “resurrected.”

With this idea in mind, professor and researcher Altaci Rubim took an important part in the Indigenous Languages International Decade, a global mobilization that started in 2022 and will go on until 2032, instituted by the United Nations (UN). Altaci is the Latin America and Caribbean representative at Unesco's working group for this campaign.

According to Unesco, there are over 7,000 spoken languages on the planet. Among them, over 6,000 are Indigenous ones, but 3,000 are at risk of disappearing.

Among the reasons that could lead a language to extinction are factors such as speakers dying, colonizers or missionaries forbidding to speak it, territorial destruction, racism, and discrimination. In 2022, the death of a Tanaru Indigenous man, known as “the Indigenous in a hole,” was the end of a linguistic treasure that lived only with him.

More:
https://globalvoices.org/2023/07/26/indigenous-languages-are-asleep-not-extinct-says-kokama-linguistics-researcher/