Abstract
Papua New Guinea is home to >10% of the world's languages and rich and varied biocultural knowledge, but the future of this diversity remains unclear. We measured language skills of 6,190 students speaking 392 languages (5.5% of the global total) and modeled their future trends using individual-level variables characterizing family language use, socioeconomic conditions, students' skills, and language traits. This approach showed that only 58% of the students, compared to 91% of their parents, were fluent in indigenous languages, while the trends in key drivers of language skills (language use at home, proportion of mixed-language families, urbanization, students' traditional skills) predicted accelerating decline of fluency to an estimated 26% in the next generation of students. Ethnobiological knowledge declined in close parallel with language skills. Varied medicinal plant uses known to the students speaking indigenous languages are replaced by a few, mostly nonnative species for the students speaking English or Tok Pisin, the national lingua franca. Most (88%) students want to teach indigenous language to their children. While crucial for keeping languages alive, this intention faces powerful external pressures as key factors (education, cash economy, road networks, and urbanization) associated with language attrition are valued in contemporary society.
Highlights
When evaluated against a common set of extinction-risk criteria, the world’s ∼7,000 extant languages [1] are even more threatened than its biological diversity [2]
When we tested key factors causing language attrition among Papua New Guinean students speaking 392 different indigenous languages, we found an unexpectedly rapid decline in their language skills compared to their parents and predicted further acceleration of language loss in the generation
We have shown that the drivers of language loss documented for communities around the world [45] are, to variable extents, at play in the world’s most linguistically diverse nation
Summary
When evaluated against a common set of extinction-risk criteria, the world’s ∼7,000 extant languages [1] are even more threatened than its biological diversity [2]. The present study uses a modeling approach to assess multiple drivers of language attrition and ethnobiological knowledge loss, based on extensive data for individual speakers, to predict future trends in a global hotspot of linguistic and cultural diversity. When we tested key factors causing language attrition among Papua New Guinean students speaking 392 different indigenous languages, we found an unexpectedly rapid decline in their language skills compared to their parents and predicted further acceleration of language loss in the generation. The true status of the country’s languages cannot be assessed in the absence of a national linguistic survey [24] This study presents such a survey and examines the present status and future dynamics of language and biocultural knowledge loss
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