Endangered Languages of the Pacific Region
by Osamu Sakiyama
1. Linguistic Background
The languages that are currently spoken in
the Pacific region can be divided broadly into three groups: the Australian and
New Guinean languages formed by people who participated in the region’s
earliest migrations over a period of 20,000-30,000 years starting several tens
of thousands of years ago, and the Austronesian languages spoken by Mongoloid
people who migrated from the Asian continent around 3,000 B.C. The region has
numerous languages, including 250 Aboriginal languages in
The
languages of New Guinea and the region around it show diverse linkages and wide
variations between languages. The Austronesian languages of the Pacific region
are mostly classified as Oceanian languages, while the Chamorro and Palau
languages of Micronesia are classified into the languages of Western Malaya and
Polynesia (WMP, Indonesian family), and the indigenous languages of Maluku and
Irian Jaya in Eastern Indonesia into the Central Malayo-Polynesian (CMP) or the
South Halmahera-West New Guinea (SHWNG) subgroups. In particular, there are
strong similarities between the linguistic characteristics of the CMP and SHWNG
languages and those of the Melanesian branch of the Oceanian languages. These
linguistic conditions and characteristics are attributable to ethnic migrations
within the region over a long period of time, accompanied by contacts and linguistic
merging with indigenous Papuan people. Papuan languages are still found in
parts of Indonesia, including Northern Halmahera and the islands of Pantar and
Alor and central and eastern Timor in the Province of Nusa Tenggara. In New
Guinea, contact with Papuan languages has caused some Austronesian languages to
exhibit a word order change from subject-verb-object to subject-object-verb
(Austronesian Type 2) (Sakiyama 1994).
2. Linguistic Strata
With the start of colonization by the
European powers in the nineteenth century, a new set of linguistic
circumstances developed in the region. First, pidgin languages based on
European and Melanesian languages gradually emerged as common languages. The
establishment of plantations in Samoa and in Queensland, Australia, which had
concentrations of people who spoke Melanesian languages, was important in
providing breeding grounds for pidgin languages. A pidgin language is formed
from elements of the grammar of both contributing languages, though the pidgin
languages tend to be looked down upon from the perspective of the more dominant
of the two parent languages. The region’s newly formed common languages,
including Tok Pisin, Bislama, and Solomon Pidgin, flourished after they were
taken back to the homelands of the various speakers. This was possible because
Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea were all multilingual
societies without dominant languages. The number of speakers of pidgin
languages increased rapidly in this environment. At the same time, the
continuing existence of ethnic minority languages came under threat.
Examples
of pidgins that were creolized (adopted as mother languages in their own right)
include Solomon Pijin, which eventually had over 1,000 speakers aged five and over
(1976) in the Solomon Islands. Bislama, a mixture of over 100 indigenous
languages grafted upon a base of English and French, is now spoken by almost
the entire population of Vanuatu (170,000 in 1996) and is partially creolized.
Of particular interest is the fact that a group of more than 1,000 people who
emigrated to New Caledonia have adopted Bislama as their primary language. The
situation in Papua New Guinea, which has a population of 4,300,000 (1996), is
even more dramatic. By 1982 the number of people using Tok Pisin as their
primary language had reached 50,000, while another 2,000,000 used it as a
second language (Grimes 1996).
3. Minority Languages and Common Languages
in the Pacific Region
The Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger
of Disappearing published by UNESCO (Wurm 1996) provides merely a brief
overview of the current situation in Papua New Guinea, Australia, the Solomon
Islands, and Vanuatu. There is no mention of Micronesia, New Caledonia, or
Polynesia, presumably because of a lack of information resulting from the large
number of languages in these areas. The following report covers areas and
languages that I have researched and endangered languages covered by field
studies carried out by Japanese researchers.
3.1 Belau (Palau), Micronesia
According to Belau (Palau) government
statistics (1990), the total population of 15,122 people includes 61 people
living on outlying islands in Sonsorol State, and 33 in Hatohobei (Tochobei)
State. Apart from the Sonsorol Islands, Sonsorol State also includes the
islands of Fanah, Meril and Pulo An. In addition to the Hatohobei language, the
language mix on these outlying islands also includes nuclear Micronesian
(Chuukic) languages, which are the core Oceanian languages spoken in the
Carolines. They differ from Palauan, which is an Indonesian language. To lump
these languages together as the Sonsorol languages with a total of 600 speakers
(Wurm and Hattori 1981-83) is as inaccurate as combining the Miyako dialects of
Okinawa into a single classification.
The
number of Chuukic speakers has declined steadily since these figures were
compiled. Starting in the German colonial period of the early twentieth
century, people have been relocated from these outlying islands to Echang on
Arakabesan Island in Belau. Today there are several hundred of these people.
Many of those born in the new location only speak Palauan. A study by S. Oda
(1975) estimated that there were 50 speakers of Pulo Annian. The language of
Meril continued to decline and has now become extinct.
From
the early part of the twentieth century until the end of World War II,
Micronesia was under Japanese rule, administered by the South Seas Mandate.
Japanese was used as a common language, and its influence is still evident
today. The linguistic data on Micronesia presented by Grimes (1996) is
distorted by the fact that, while the number of English speakers is shown, no
mention is made of Japanese. A study carried out in 1970 (Wurm, Mühlhäusler,
and Tryon 1996) found that people aged 35 and over could speak basic Japanese.
This group is equivalent to people aged 63 and over in 1998. An estimate based
on Belau government statistics (1990) suggests that more than 1,000 of these
people are still alive. In the State of Yap in the Federated States of
Micronesia, where the percentage of females attending school is said to have
been low, we can assume that the number of Japanese speakers has fallen below
500.
It
has been suggested that if Japan had continued to rule Micronesia, Japanese
would certainly have become the sole language in the region, and indigenous
languages would have disappeared (Wurm, Mühlhäusler, and Tryon 1996). This
seems an overly harsh appraisal of Japan’s language policy. Except in the
schools, as a matter of fact no significant steps were taken to promote the use
of Japanese. Micronesia previously had no common language for communication
between different islands. Even today, old people from different islands use
Japanese as a common language (Sakiyama 1995; Toki 1998). However, the role of
this Japanese pidgin appears to have ended within a single generation, and in
this sense it too is an endangered language. Pidgin Japanese continues to be
used as a lingua franca by Taiwanese in their fifties and older (Wurm,
Mühlhäusler, and Tryon 1996), and the number of speakers is estimated to have
been 10,000 in 1993 (Grimes 1996).
3.2 Yap, Micronesia
Ngulu Atoll is situated between the Yap
Islands and the Belau Islands. The Nguluwan language is a mixture of Yapese and
Ulithian, which belongs to the Chuukic family. It has inherited the Ulithian
phonetic system and a partial version of Yap grammar (Sakiyama 1982). Nguluwan
appears to have evolved through bilingualism between Yapese and Ulithian, and
to describe it as a dialect of Ulithian (Grimes 1996) is inappropriate. In 1980
there were 28 speakers. Even with the inclusion of people who had migrated to
Guror on Yap Island, where the parent village is located, the number of
speakers was fewer than 50. Speakers are being assimilated rapidly into the
Yapese language and culture.
3.3 Maluku, Indonesia
The book Atlas Bahasa Tanah Maluku (Taber et
al. 1996) covers 117 ethnic languages (Austronesian, Papuan), including numbers
of speakers for each language, areas of habitation and migration, access
routes, simple cultural information, and basic numbers and expressions. This
work is especially valuable since it corrects inaccuracies and errors in the
1977 Classification and Index of the World's Languages by C. Y. L. Voegelin and
F. M. Voegelin. It also distinguishes languages and dialects according to their
a priori mutual intelligibility. Fifteen languages are listed as having fewer
than 1,000 speakers. They include the Nakaela language of Seram, which has only
5 speakers, the Amahai and Paulohi languages, also of Seram, which are spoken
by 50 people each, and the South Nuaulu and Yalahatan languages, which have
1,000 speakers each on Seram Island. The data, however, are not complete. For
example, the Bajau language is not included, presumably because of the
difficulty of accessing the various solitary islands where the Bajau people
live. The author researched the Yalahatan language in 1997 and in 1998, and the
Bajau language (2,000 speakers) on Sangkuwang Island in 1997.
3.4 Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea
Detailed information about the names,
numbers of speakers, and research data for over 800 languages spoken in New
Guinea and its coastal regions can be found in the works by the Barrs (1978),
Voorhoeve (1975), and Wurm (1982). However, not only the minority languages but
even the majority languages other than a few have yet to be surveyed and
researched adequately. There are many languages for which vocabulary collection
has yet to be undertaken. It appears that dictionaries or grammars have been
published for less than one-tenth of the region’s languages. However, the
gospel has been published in several dozen languages using orthographies
established by SIL. Papuan languages range from those with substantial speaker
populations, including Enga, Chimbu (Kuman), and Dani, which are spoken by well
over 100,000 people, to endangered languages such as Abaga with 5 speakers (150
according to Wurm [1982]), Makolkol with 7 (unknown according to Wurm), and
Sene with under 10. There are very many languages for which the number of
speakers is unknown and more up-to-date information is needed. Also, despite
having substantially more than 1,000 speakers (Wurm 1982; Grimes 1996), Murik
is in danger of extinction due to the creolization of Tok Pisin (Foley 1986).
Moreover, it is questionable whether the present lists include all of the
region’s languages.
Information
about Irian Jaya is even sparser. A study on popular languages carried out by
the author in 1984-85 revealed that Kuot (New Ireland), Taulil (New Britain),
and Sko (Irian Jaya) all had several hundred speakers and that, in the case of
Taulil in particular, an increasing number of young people were able to
understand what their elders were saying but could no longer speak the language
themselves. There has been a rapid shift to Kuanua, an indigenous language used
in trade with neighboring Rabaul, which is replacing Taulil.
3.5 Solomon Islands, Melanesia
The total population of the Solomon Islands
is 390,000 (1996). There are 63 Papuan, Melanesian, and Polynesian indigenous
languages, of which only 37 are spoken by over 1,000 people (Grimes 1996). The
Papuan Kazukuru languages (Guliguli, Doriri) of New Georgia, which were known
to be endangered as early as 1931, have become extinct already, leaving behind
just some scant linguistic information. The Melanesian Tanema and Vano
languages of the Santa Cruz Islands and the Laghu language of the Santa Isabel
Islands were extinct by 1990. This does not mean that the groups speaking them
died out, but rather that the languages succumbed to the shift to Roviana, a
trade language used in neighboring regions, or were replaced by Solomon Pijin
(Sakiyama 1996).
3.6 Vanuatu, Melanesia
The situation in Vanuatu is very similar to
that in the Solomon Islands. The official view, written in Bislama, is as
follows:
I
gat sam ples long 110 lanwis evriwan so i gat bigfala lanwis difrens long
Vanuatu. Pipol blong wan velej ol i toktok long olgeta bakegen evridei nomo
long lanwis be i no Bislama, Inglis o Franis. (Vanuatu currently has 110
indigenous languages, which are all very different linguistically. On an
everyday basis people in villages speak only their local languages, not
Bislama, English, or French). (Vanuatu, 1980, Institute of Pacific Studies)
Among
the Melanesian and Polynesian indigenous languages spoken by 170,000 people, or
93% of the total population (1996), there are many small minority tongues.
These include Aore, which has only a single speaker (extinct according to Wurm
and Hattori [1981-83]); Maragus and Ura (with 10 speakers each); Nasarian, and
Sowa (with 20); and Dixon Reef, Lorediakarkar, Mafea, and Tambotalo (with 50).
If languages with around 100 speakers are included, this category accounts for
about one-half of the total number of languages (Grimes 1996). The spread of
Bislama has had the effect of putting these languages in jeopardy.
3.7 New Caledonia, Melanesia
New Caledonia has a total population of
145,000 people, of whom 62,000 are indigenous. As of 1981, there were 28
languages, all Melanesian except for the one Polynesian language Uvean. The
only languages with over 2,000 speakers are Cemuhi, Paicî, Ajië, and Xârâcùù,
along with Dehu and Nengone, which are spoken on the Loyalty Islands.
Dumbea
(Paita), which is spoken by several hundred people, has been described by T.
Shintani and Y. Paita (1983). And M. Osumi (1995) has described Tinrin, which
has an estimated 400 speakers. Speakers of Tinrin are bilingual in Xârâcùù or
Ajië. Nerë has 20 speakers and Arhö 10, while Waamwang, which had 3 speakers in
1946, is now reported to be extinct (Grimes 1996). Descendants of Javanese, who
began to migrate to New Caledonia in the early part of the twentieth century,
now number several thousand. The Javanese language spoken by these people,
which has developed in isolation from the Javanese homeland, has attracted
attention as a new pidgin language.
3.8 Australia
When Europeans first arrived in Australia in
1788, it is estimated that there were 700 different tribes in a population of
500,000-1,000,000 (Comrie, Matthews, and Polinsky 1996). By the 1830s Tasmanian
had become extinct, and today the number of Aboriginal languages has fallen to
less than one-half what it once was. However, T. Tsunoda left detailed records
of the Warrungu language, the last speaker of which died in 1981, and the Djaru
language, which has only 200 speakers (Tsunoda 1974, 1981). Yawuru, which
belongs to the Nyulnyulan family, reportedly has fewer than 20 speakers, all
aged in their sixties or older. The language is described by K. Hosokawa
(1992).
4. Conclusions
The Pacific has been heavily crisscrossed by
human migration from ancient to modern times. All Pacific countries except the
Kingdom of Tonga were colonized. This historical background is reflected in the
existence of multilevel diglossia in all regions of the Pacific.
Depending
on the generation, the top level of language in Micronesia is either English (the
official language) or pidgin Japanese (used as a lingua franca among islands).
The next level is made up of the languages of major islands that exist as
political units, such as Palauan, Yapese and Ponapean. On the lowest level are
the various ethnic languages spoken mainly on solitary islands.
In
the Maluku Islands of Indonesia, local Malay languages such as Ambonese Malay,
North Maluku Malay and Bacanese Malay, form a layer beneath the official
language, Indonesian. Under them are the dominant local languages, such as
Hitu, which is spoken by 15,000 people on Ambon Island, and Ternate and Tidore,
which are spoken in the Halmahera region. These are important as urban
languages. On the lowest level are the various vernaculars.
In
Papua New Guinea, standard English forms the top level, followed by Papua New
Guinean English. Tok Pisin and Hiri Motu are used as common languages among the
various ethnic groups. Beneath these layers are the regional or occupational
common languages. For example, Hiri Motu is used as the law enforcement lingua
franca in coastal areas around the Gulf of Papua, Yabem as a missionary
language along the coast of the Huon Gulf, and Malay as a trade language in
areas along the border with Indonesia. On the next level are the ethnic and
tribal languages used on a day-to-day basis.
An
example of a similar pattern in Polynesia can be found in Hawaii, where English
and Hawaiian English rank above Da Kine Talk or Pidgin To Da Max, which are
mixtures of English and Oceanic languages and are used as common languages
among the various Asian migrants who have settled in Hawaii. Beneath these are
ethnic languages, including Hawaiian and the various immigrant languages, such
as a common Japanese based on the Hiroshima dialect, as well as Cantonese,
Korean, and Tagalog.
All
of the threatened languages are in danger because of their status as indigenous
minority languages positioned at the lowest level of the linguistic hierarchy.
Reports to date have included little discussion of the multilevel
classification of linguistic strata from a formal linguistic perspective. It
will be necessary in the future to examine these phenomena from the
perspectives of sociolinguistics or linguistic anthropology.
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*Translation of the author’s essay “Taiheiyo chiiki no kiki gengo”, Gekkan
Gengo, Taishukan Publishing Co., 28(2), 102-11, 1999, with the permission
of the publisher.
Any
comments and suggestions to sakiyama@idc.minpaku.ac.jp
