BBC 6分钟英语学习 保存已经消失的语言

Six news English from BBC learning english dot com.

Hello. This is six minute English from BBC Learning English.

I'm Neil, and I'm Phil. And now that we've done our hellos, let's hear some greetings

in different languages from around the world.

But what do these languages have in common?

John? I'm afraid I don't know what they have in common, because I don't recognize any of them.

Well, sadly, the one thing uniting these languages is that they're all endangered.

We often hear about animals at risk of extinction, but a recent study by the Australian National University found that out of the world's 7000 existing languages, half are under threat.

But what can be done to save languages from dying out?

That's what we'll be discussing in this program, and as usual, we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well.

But 1st, I have a question for you, phil And it's about a country which used to be one of the most linguistically richer places on Earth, australia.

Before European settlers arrived in the 1800s, australia had over 200 languages spoken by the native Aboriginal people who had lived there for thousands of years.

Many Aboriginal languages were destroyed by the brutal laws of the Australian government at the time.

However, some survived. So which of the following Aboriginal languages is still spoken today?

Is it a jinang, b Alawa or c Gagadu?

Hmm, I'll guess it's Jinning. OK, phil I'll reveal the answer later in the program.

The sad truth is that it was no accident that the Aboriginal languages died out.

Given the cruel treatment of Aboriginal people, children were removed from their mothers and sent to schools thousands of miles away to learn English.

And even today, aboriginal communities experience racism and poverty.

Another Aboriginal language, bangala, officially died in 1960 when its last native speaker, elder Moony Davis, passed away.

But Bangala has been brought back to life, and today it's spoken between paren'ts and children and even learned in school.

So how did a dead language with no living speakers come back to life?

The unusual answer involves a dictionary and a professor of linguistics.

Here's Professor Gilard Zuckerman telling his story for BBC World Service program People Fixing the World.

I had a dictionary written by German Lutheran Christian missionary in 1844.

His name was Clamor Vilhem Schumann, and he wrote the dictionary with up to 3500 words, which is a lot, because he wanted to christianize the in quotation marks heathens.

So it's a topsy turvy writing the wrong of the past By using a tool written for one goal.

In order to achieve the diametrically opposite goal, professor Zuckerman found an English to Bangala dictionary, written in 1844 by a German missionary, a person sent to a foreign country to teach their religion to the people living there.

Christian missionaries used the dictionary to teach English to what they called aboriginal heathens.

Heathen is an old fashioned word for someone who belongs to no religion or to a religion that is not Christianity, judaism or Islam.

Professor Zuccoman puts the words heathen in quotation marks.

The phrase in quotation marks is used to show the actual words someone else has written or said.

But here the phrase is used ironically, professor Zuckerman is questioning the real meaning of the word heathens.

He is signaling that he doesn't think aboriginals are heathens at all.

A bit like adding a wink at the end of a sentence so people know you're not serious.

What's ironic is that Professor Zuckerman used the missionary's dictionary not to spread Christianity and English, but to save an Aboriginal language from extinction.

So he calls it Topsy Turvy, meaning upside down.

Professor Zuckerman also says he is writing the wrongs of the past, a phrase which means doing something to correct a historical injustice from the past, in this case, the destruction of Aboriginal language and culture.

Speaking your own language is about more than communication.

It means knowing your roots and feeling good about yourself.

I

think it's time you reveal the answer to your question.

Neil OK, well, phil, you guess that Jinang was another living Aboriginal language, which was the correct answer?

Right? Let's recap the vocabulary we've learned, starting with missionary someone sent to spread their religion to a foreign country.

Heathen is an old fashioned name for someone who believes in no religion.

The phrase in quotation marks is used to show the actual word spoken or written by someone else.

It can also be used, ironically, to show skepticism, disagreement or belief that a word is misused.

Topsy Turvy means upside down or disorganized.

If you write the wrongs of the past, you try to correct a historical injustice.

Once again, our 6 min are up.

Good Bye for now. Hi. Six news English from BBC learning english dot com.

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