ABSTRACT
Discourse on Endangered Languages [ELs] tends to be rather dismal. ELs are variously described as critically endangered, moribund and extinct. Thirty years ago Krauss (1992) warned about the potential demise of 90% of the world’s languages. A re-examination is a little less gloomy but overall the language situation is still regarded as dire.
My own background focuses on Australian [Indigenous] Languages with particular reference to ELs over the last 30 years. Although the discourse on Australian ELs mirrors that of other regions I continue to encounter Australian Languages that have experienced amazing progress despite having been classified by Ethnologue as critically endangered, moribund or extinct. For instance, language translations of Shakespearean sonnets have been prepared and performed at the Globe Theatre in London. A translation of Macbeth has been performed on stage and Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury has been dubbed. For another EL, supposedly in dire straits, education in the language has become available from the earliest years of schooling through to university and other post-secondary settings [TAFE/Polytechnic Community College]. The last fluent speaker died in 1929. Apparently new L1 speakers are now emerging!
This chapter will first review the discourse on ELs in general; then the discourse on Australian Languages in particular; a series of case studies from right around Australia of supposed ELs that have experienced amazing progress; a consideration of the tendency to be dismissive of such achievements; some proposals towards reconsidering GIDS and EGIDS. We are left with a dissonance to be explained – a continuing gloomy discourse on Australian Languages in the face of surprising and increasingly numerous counter-examples: the rise and rise of Australian Languages.
