Rare Tongues : The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gibb, Lorna.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (238 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2025.

Summary:

An enthralling tour of the world’s rarest and most endangered languagesLanguages and cultures are becoming increasingly homogenous, with the resulting loss of a rich linguistic tapestry reflecting unique perspectives and ways of life. Rare Tongues tells the stories of the world’s rare and vanishing languages, revealing how each is a living testament to human resilience, adaptability, and the perennial quest for identity.Taking readers on a captivating journey of discovery, Lorna Gibb explores the histories of languages under threat or already extinct as well as those in resurgence, shedding light on their origins, development, and distinctive voices. She travels the globe—from Australia and Finland to India, the Canary Islands, Namibia, Scotland, and Paraguay—showing how these languages are not mere words and syntax but keepers of diverse worldviews, sites of ethnic conflict, and a means for finding surprising commonalities. Readers learn the basics of how various language systems work—with vowels and consonants, whistles and clicks, tonal inflections, or hand signs—and how this kaleidoscope of self-expression carries vital information about our planet, indigenous cultures and tradition, and the history and evolution of humankind.Rare Tongues is essential reading for anyone concerned about the preservation of endangered languages and an eloquent and disarmingly personal meditation on why the world’s linguistic heritage is so fundamental to our shared experience—and why its loss should worry us all.

Contents:

Cover

Contents

Introduction

1. Latin and How Languages Develop

A very brief introduction to Latin grammar

A short history

Manchu: the language of a lost empire

2. Khoisan - The Languages with Many Sounds

Khoikhoi

A history of Khoikhoi

Language activism

3. Lost and Reclaimed

The death of a language

The endangered languages of India

The Leco language of Bolivia

The decline of Penan

The Ainu language of Japan

The rarest language in Europe

The language of Jesus

Language reclamation: decolonizing the language of extinction

4. Languages and Ecosystems: An Environmentalist Vocabulary

Hawaiian

The Nuxálk language

The ecological significance of Sámi

Languages of medicine

African indigenous knowledge systems

5. Plains Sign Talk - The Sound of Silence

The development of Plains Sign Talk

PST today

Signalling

6. Whistled Languages

The phonetics of whistling

El Silbo of Gomera

Hmong: the language of courtship

The bird language of Turkey

The whistling of lullabies

The forests are full of whistling

What can we learn from the whistled languages?

7. Rare Tongues in Europe: Sicilian, Corsican, Catalan, and Monégasque

Sicilian

Corsican

Catalan

The language and the prince

8. Language in Conflict

Basque and Bertsolaritza

The declaration of a common language

Sri Lankan language wars

The Tajikstan language conflict

9. Language Revival

Hebrew: creating a new language for a modern world

The language of the Māori people of New Zealand

10. Dare to Speak Your Language: Guarani and Gaelic

Guarani

Scottish Gaelic

Conclusion

Appendix: A Note on Some Linguistic Terms and the Idea of Linguistic Universality

Phonetics

Phonology

Syntax

Semantics and pragmatics

Historical Linguistics

Ecolinguistics.

Sociolinguistics

Language universals

Select Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Notes

Index.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780691275703

069127570X

OCLC:

1496392864