<Nature and Our Future: The Mekong Basin and Japan>

1-6. Another Type of Diversity:
Languages in the Mekong Basin
A total of 398 languages are spoken in 5 of the Mekong
countries (Burma, Lao PDR, Thailand, Cambodia, andVietnam). This is equivalent to 5.8% of all the 6,909
languages in the world listed in Ethnologue. On theother hand, the number of speakers in these 5 countries
is only 3.2% of the world’s population, so this means
3.2% of speakers speak 5.8% of the world’s languages.
This falls short of the Pacific (0.1% of speakers, 18.1%of languages) and the North and South American
continents (0.8% of speakers, 14.4% of languages), but
A Mon temple in Ratchaburi Province, western
Thailand (September 2012).
in comparison to Europe (26.1% of speakers, 3.4% oflanguages) or Asia as a whole (60.8% of speakers, 33.6%of languages), it can be said that there is a wide diversity of languages in proportion to the populationin the Mekong region1.
Country# of speakers
13,511,970# of languages # of Languages withfewer than 10,000 speakers
2312Examples ofminority languages
Brao, Samre, Sa’ochCambodia
Lao PDR

5,349,894

84

47

Aheu, Arem, Chut

Burma

47,319,800

111

35Anu, Tawr Chin, Hpon

Thailand

51,668,997

74

28

Bisu, Chong, Plang

Vietnam

75,650,099

106

42Arem, Chut, En

Total (5 countries) 193,500,760

398

164

World total

5,959,511,717

6,909

3,524

Percentage

3.2％

5.8％

Table: Language diversity in 5 countries of the Mekong Basin

Minority Languages Support Diversity
Of the 398 languages spoken in the 5 countries of the Mekong basin, 164 (41.2%) have fewer than 10thousand speakers2. While a language’s survival is not solely determined by the number of speakers(Nettle and Romaine 2000), after calculations from comparative examinations, Crystal (2000)
estimates that 50% of the world’s languages will disappear in the next 100 years, and the percentageof languages that have fewer than 10 thousand speakers is precisely 51.0% (3,524 languages).
Therefore, there is a possibility that 164 languages spoken by ethnic and indigenous peoples in theMekong Region will disappear during the 21st century. This calculates to a disappearance of 1 or 2
languages each year in the 5 countries of the Mekong Region alone. Languages have continually gone
extinct and evolved throughout human history, but the rate of extinction has increased tremendously
over the past 500 years and is a concern (Nettle and Romaine 2000).

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What are the Threats to Minority Languages?
The biggest factor threatening minority languages in the Mekong Region is the rapid proliferationof predominant languages like national and official languages. Inparticular, public education encourages or even requires use andacquisition of predominant languages. While children of minority
groups need to learn national and official languages and have theright to do so, it is a problem that teachers and parents overtly or
covertly try to impede the use of minority languages. This leads
children to question the value of their birth and upbringing. As
a result, minority languages are not used at school, and not evenat home, so the language is not passed to the next generation. Inaddition, predominant languages expand and exercise influence
through television, radio, newspapers and other mass media, as wellas pop culture in movies and music. In addition, with the Associationof Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) integration coming up in2015, the already predominant “international” language of English Kmhmu women in Pak Beng District,is positioning itself as the predominant means of communication in Oudomxay Province in northern LaoPDR.
the Mekong Region, making it all that much more difficult to bringattention to the value of minority languages.
Conflict and civil wars, natural disasters, epidemics, and (forced) relocation due to large-scale
development such as dam construction are also threats to the survival of minority languages. Speakersof Moken, a minority language used by indigenous people living in southern Burma and Thailand,
were hard hit by the earthquake and tsunami of December 2004. Before that, they were alreadyeconomically and socially disadvantaged, but Moken speakers, particularly those living along thecoast who lost their essential boats and homes to the tsunami, are facing a crisis (Skehan 2012). Also,
villages of speakers of Ugong—a language in the Sino-Tibetan language family—living in western
Thailand were forced to resettle for the construction of a dam by the Electricity Generating Authorityof Thailand (EGAT). As a result, the cohesiveness of the local community was weakened, creating
more obstacles to maintaining language and identity (Bradley 1989).

Nyaheun women in the Xekong River Basin,southern Lao PDR.

The languages of indigenous and minority peoples arefilled with wisdom and knowledge accumulated throughgenerations of traditional lifestyles and surviving innature. Some researchers say people are born with a rightto language and culture (McCarty et al. 2007). With
the disappearance of a language, the wisdom it contains
is lost, and there is the danger of denying people theirrights to their culture. We are facing a crisis not only of
biological diversity, but also of language diversity.

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References
Bradley, David. 1989. The Disappearance of the Ugong in Thailand. In Nancy Dorian (ed.)
Investigating Obsolescence: Studies in Language Contraction and Death.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 33-40.
Crystal, David. 2000. Language Death. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Lewis, M. Paul (ed.) 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16th Edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International.
http://www.ethnologue.com/
McCarty, Teresa L., Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, and Ole Henrik Magga. 2007. Education for Speakers of Endangered Languages.
In Handbook of Educational Linguistics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press 297-311.
Nettle, Daniel. 1999. Linguistic Diversity. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Nettle, Daniel, and Suzanne Romaine. 2000.
Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World’s Languages. Oxford: UK, Oxford University Press.
Skehan, Craig. 2012. Time Running out for Moken Way of Life. Bangkok Post May 13, 2012.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/investigation/293059/time-running-out-for-moken-way-of-life

Toshiyuki Doi

1. In Africa, 12.2% of the world’s speakers use 30.5% of the world’s languages.
2. Nettle (1999) reported that the percentage of languages with fewer than 10,000 speakers is 92.8% in Australia/Oceania, 76.5% inSouth America, 77.8% in North America, 36.4% in Central America, 32.6% in Africa, and 30.2% in Europe.The global average is59.4%, and the average in Asia is 52.8%.

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