Indigenous languages: the pace of extinction is slower than expected—but still alarming

In 5 seconds 100 years from now, how many people will still be speaking one of Canada's 70 Indigenous languages? UdeM demographers come up with a nuanced projection.

On average every month across the globe, two Indigenous languages disappear, according to the United Nations. And 40 per cent of the world's languages, mostly Indigenous, are threatened with long-term extinction as fewer and fewer people speak them.

Underscoring the urgency of the situation, the UN proclaimed 2022-2032 as the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.

“It would be great if we could raise awareness and convince decision-makers to address this problem,” said Michaël Boissonneault, a professor in Université de Montréal's Department of Demography and Population Sciences.

As a specialist in public-policy research, Boissonneault has been examining the status of Indigenous language-speaking populations in Canada.

“Linguists are interested in endangered Indigenous languages but don't necessarily have the tools to examine what might happen to the people involved," he said. "I thought that, as a demographer, I could do something useful by applying population projections to endangered languages."

A twist on the component method

Michaël Boissonneault

To predict the size of Indigenous language-speaking populations in 2101, Boissonneault, working closely with researchers in history and linguistics, relied on the component method, which factors in mortality, fertility and migration within target populations.

Their findings were recently published in the Royal Society Open Science journal.

Despite the high quality of Canadian census data, the researchers faced a number of challenges. Some languages have small numbers of speakers, sometimes as few as 100. “The component method was not adapted for such tiny populations,” said  Boissonneault.

For that reason, certain languages were grouped together to arrive at a more robust projection of the future status of 27 languages or language groups spoken in Canada: in total, 21 individual languages and 6 groups. Data from several Canadian censuses (2001, 2006, 2011, 2016 and 2021) were used, even though these types of projections are typically based on a single reference year.

“It's not ideal," said Boissonneault. "However, the goal was not to predict exactly what will happen to these languages in the future, but rather to show the potential of demographic projection, since that had never been done before."

A marked reduction

In line with a number of specialists' predictions, the projection showed a marked reduction in populations speaking certain Indigenous languages, even though the number of Indigenous language-speakers as a whole remained fairly constant.

“We know that some languages are losing speakers rapidly, even though this is offset by gains in more commonly spoken languages,” said Boissonneault.

For example, the model estimates that the number of Inuktitut and Atikamekw speakers will double by 2101, while another 16 languages could lose at least 90 per cent of their speakers over the same period.

The situation is most dire in Western Canada, Boissonneault noted. The fact that so many languages there are used by small numbers of speakers may account for their precarious position. The projection may also reflect the more recent decline of certain languages in Western Canada because of their different historical trajectories.

By contrast, “due to the historical realities of colonization, various languages in Eastern Canada died out long ago,” Boissonneault said.

Not as rapid a decline

The good news is that the current decline does not appear to be as rapid as once thought. “That surprised us," said Boissonneault. "The article's second author, a linguist, found that the data did not accurately reflect what he was seeing out in the field.”

Moreover, the projection does not consider the potential impact of language revitalization projects or other external factors that may change the trajectory of certain languages, either facilitating or hindering their transmission.

“Given the size of the sub-populations, it was a very simple model,” Boissonneault said.

He hopes that the data will be helpful to all communities concerned and that they will take part in future collaborations.

“I'd also like to make my model a little more complex and realistic, taking into account more factors, including urbanization, which has an impact on language preservation,” he said.

He would also like to find ways to apply projections to the 70 or so Indigenous languages spoken in Canada, not least because this diversity is “a form of cultural richness that should be preserved.”

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