Final_Final_Talking Point 4_Mark1 1

1/4/2008 2:53:35 PM

About ICIMOD
The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is anindependent ‘Mountain Learning and Knowledge Centre’ serving the eight countriesof the Hindu Kush-Himalayas – Afghanistan , Bangladesh , Bhutan , China, India , Myanmar , Nepal , and Pakistan– and the global mountaincommunity. Founded in 1983, ICIMOD is based in Kathmandu, Nepal, and brings
together a partnership of regional member countries, partner institutions, and donors
with a commitment for development action to secure a better future for the people
and environment of the extended Himalayan region. ICIMOD’s activities are supported
by its core programme donors: the governments of Austria, Denmark, Germany,
Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, and its regional member countries, along with overthirty project co–financing donors. The primary objective of the Centre is to promote thedevelopment of an economically and environmentally sound mountain ecosystem andto improve the living standards of mountain populations.

The ‘Talking Points’ series from ICIMOD contains short presentations of topical,
controversial, or problematic themes, where general consensus has not yet beenreached or where action may be appropriate. They are intended to stimulate thought,
and discussion, their contents should not be seen as definitive statements.

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_Mark2 2

1/4/2008 2:54:20 PM

Linguistic Diversity
and the Preservation ofEndangered Languages
A Case Study from Nepal

Mark Turin

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD)
Kathmandu, Nepal
December 2007

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_Mark3 3

1/4/2008 2:54:21 PM

Copyright © 2007
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD)
All rights reserved
Published byInternational Centre for Integrated Mountain Development
G.P.O. Box 3226
Kathmandu, Nepal
ISBN

978 92 9115 055 7 (printed)
978 92 9115 074 8 (electronic)

Production team
Joyce M. Mendez (Editor)
A. Beatrice Murray (Senior Editor)
Punam Pradhan (Layout Design)
Asha Kaji Thaku (Editorial Assistant)Printed and bound in Nepal by
Quality Printers Pvt. Ltd.
Kathmandu
Reproduction
This publication may be reproduced in whole or in part and in any form for educationalor non-profit purposes without special permission from the copyright holder, provided
acknowledgement of the source is made. ICIMOD would appreciate receiving a copy of any
publication that uses this publication as a source.
No use of this publication may be made for resale or for any other commercial purpose
whatsoever without prior permission in writing from ICIMOD.
Note
The views and interpretations in this publication are those of the author. They are not
attributable to ICIMOD and do not imply the expression of any opinion concerning the legal
status of any country, territory, city or area of its authorities, or concerning the delimitationof its frontiers or boundaries, or the endorsement of any product.
This publication is available in electronic form at http://books.icimod.org

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_Mark4 4

1/4/2008 2:54:21 PM

Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Summary
Acronyms and Abbreviations

Part 1: Setting the Scene
The Greater Himalayan Region: A Language ‘Mega Centre’
The Linguistic Wealth of Nepal
The Status of Nepal’s Endangered Languages
Preserving and Promoting Linguistic Diversity in the Himalayan Region

1
1
1
5
10

Part 2: The Position of Language in Nepal’s Bio-cultural Context 13
Language and Ecology: An Intimate Symbiosis
Language and the Constitution: Promise versus Delivery
Language and the Law: Linguistic Advocacy and Municipal Debate
Language and the Census: Who is Being Counted and Why?
Language and Media: Nepal’s Minority Voices on Air and in Print
Language and Education: the Mother Tongue Debate
Language and Gender: the Central Role of Women
Language and Conflict: Maoists, Politics, and Sanskrit
Language and Culture: Identity in Difference

13
14
18
20
22
23
25
26
27

Part 3: Sustainable Futures: Promotion of Diversity at all Levels

29

Language Policy in Neighbouring Himalayan States
Signs of Hope: Projects Underway in Nepal and the Himalayas

29
30

Web Resources

37

Bibliography

39

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec1:iii Sec1:iii

1/4/2008 2:54:21 PM

Foreword
Mountains in general and the Himalayas in particular are not only centres ofextraordinary biodiversity, they are also cultural and linguistic hotspots. Of theapproximately 600 languages found in the Himalayas, over 400 are spoken by groups ofless than 100,000 people, and most of these are in danger of extinction. Analogous to
the threat of species extinction, the extinction of languages should be regarded as an
unrecoverable loss of diversity for all of humankind.
Since its foundation in 1983, ICIMOD has supported the livelihoods of mountainpeoples in various ways. The Centre helps to create sustainable mountain societies bypromoting an enabling environment that enhances equity and empowers marginalised
mountain people in the Hindu Kush-Himalayas. This includes the preservation andpromotion of the existing social, cultural and linguistic diversity as the basis of humanwell-being.
Mark Turin, the author of this publication, brings together a wide range of informationon language diversity, endangerment, and preservation, and situates these debatesin the social context of contemporary Nepal. His findings clearly illustrate theinterrelatedness of language, culture, knowledge, and ethnicity, as well as the close
connection with questions of minorities, political orientation, and even ecologicalsustainability.
A disturbingly large number of Nepal’s over 100 mother tongues are severely
endangered and will likely be reduced to symbolic identity markers within a generation.
At the same time, we can observe a revival of ethnic identities often closely related to
linguistic attributes.
The lessons drawn from this study reach far beyond the Nepali context and may be
applied to other multilingual societies across the Himalayan region and worldwide.
Successful efforts to keep languages from extinction ideally combine mother tongue
literacy and education with improvements in the socioeconomic and political status ofminority language communities.
This publication demonstrates that cultural diversity, a characteristic feature ofmountain regions, is an important asset for sustainable development. Given the highlevel of current interest in ethnolinguistic issues in Nepal, we hope that this publication
will contribute to further policy developments which acknowledge that cultural andlinguistic diversity enrich society.
Michael Kollmair
Culture, Equity, Gender and
Governance Programme
ICIMOD

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec1:v Sec1:v

1/4/2008 2:54:22 PM

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the staff of ICIMOD and in particular the former Director General,
J. Gabriel Campbell, for providing me this unique opportunity to write about linguistic
diversity and language endangerment in Nepal. The last few years of Nepal’s politicaltrajectory have been tumultuous, and linguistic rights have received a great deal ofattention within general discussions of social inclusion. Writing about these topics has
been rather like playing chess on a constantly moving board, so framing such ideas andcommitting them to paper has taken considerable time. I am grateful for the patience,
support, and flexibility that ICIMOD has afforded me.
The Culture, Equity, Gender and Governance (CEGG) programme has been myinstitutional home during my tenure as a visiting scientist at ICIMOD, and I could
not have hoped for a more supportive and like-minded group of colleagues. Special
thanks must go to Anupam Bhatia, the then Programme Manager of CEGG, whose
enthusiasm brought me on board and who has long been interested in exploring theinterconnections between linguistic diversity and biodiversity. Anupam’s successor
as Programme Manager, Michael Kollmair, has continued in the spirit of CEGG:
intellectually rigorous, dynamic and deeply committed to enhancing equity andempowering marginalised mountain people. It continues to be a pleasure to work withhim and to have had the present Talking Points shepherded through the production
pipeline with his care and attention. I thank him for his support and trust.
It would be impossible to name all the people at ICIMOD who have helped to makemy time there enjoyable, but a few deserve special mention. Within CEGG, I continue
to enjoy discussions about the passions that we share with Nani R. Subedi, Krishna
Prasad Oli, Joy Dasgupta, and Radhika Gupta. Without the patience of Govinda
Shrestha, I would have been lost, and I thank him for his ever-ready help. A. Beatrice
Murray, C.N. Anil, Prativa Chhetri, Jenny Vaidya, Milan Raj Tuladhar, and the amazing
Saisab Pradhan have all helped in countless ways to make ICIMOD a colourful anddynamic place to work. Thank you. Special thanks also to Joyce M. Mendez, my editor,
for her ongoing support during the production of the book, and to Punam Pradhan forthe layout and for patiently overseeing numerous corrections to the maps.
Policy papers such as this rely on a large corpus of freely available data which has
been carefully collected and compiled by individual researchers or organisations. In
particular, I am grateful to the editors of the online Ethnologue, staff at the Central
Bureau of Statistics, and designers and developers at the ICIMOD MENRIS Division forproviding open-access resources to facilitate comparative analysis.
I have also benefited from helpful comments made by Yogendra Prasad Yadava,
Professor at the Central Department of Linguistics at Tribhuvan University. His attention
to detail and critical engagement with my work are truly appreciated. Finally, I shouldlike to spare a word for Mark Flummerfelt and Sara Shneiderman, both of whom haveread drafts of this document and offered valuable and constructive criticism. Needlessto say, I take full responsibility for any errors, oversights, or historical inaccuracies
which may have crept in, and for any important omissions which may have crept out.
Mark Turin

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec1:vi Sec1:vi

1/4/2008 2:54:22 PM

Summary
This discussion paper aims to situate language in its social context, specifically within
Nepal, but also across the greater Himalayan region in general. Language rights andaccess to education in one’s mother tongue are fundamental aspects of sustainable
livelihoods, all the more so when the languages and communities who speak them areunder threat. This issue of Talking Points locates the growing debate about linguistic
diversity and the preservation, promotion, and protection of endangered mothertongues within a wider discussion of culture, equity, gender, and governance.
According to even the most conservative estimates, at least half of the world’s 6,500
languages are expected to become extinct in the next century. While the documentationof endangered languages has traditionally been the domain of academic linguists andanthropologists, international awareness about this impending linguistic catastropheis growing, and development organisations are becoming involved in the struggle topreserve spoken forms. The death of a language marks the loss of yet another piece of
cultural uniqueness from the mosaic of our diverse planet, and is therefore a tragedy forthe heritage of all humanity.
Language death is often compared to species extinction, and the same metaphors ofpreservation and diversity can be invoked to canvas support for both biodiversity andlanguage preservation programmes. In this sometimes provocative document, I present
the options and challenges for linguistic development in the greater Himalayan region.
This issue of Talking Points is intended to be a discussion paper, drawing on publicly
available data together with some contextual analysis. I begin by discussing the
linguistic diversity of Nepal in the frame of wider debates about diversity of all forms,
and move on to situate language in the context of ecology, the state, the legal system,
the national census, the media, the education sector, gender, the Maoist insurgency,
and, finally, culture. The last section is devoted to comparative examples from otherstates in the greater Himalayan region and to an analysis of government institutions
and non-government organisations which already are, or may be willing to, support
linguistic projects in Nepal. Throughout, I aim to position language in the context ofwider social and cultural issues.
It is my hope that policy makers may benefit from an increased appreciation of groundlevel realities for understanding the complexity of the ethnolinguistic fabric of modern
Nepal, and that scholars will pause for a moment to reflect on the formation andimplementation of suitable policy.

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec1:vii Sec1:vii

1/4/2008 2:54:22 PM

Acronyms and Abbreviations
NEFIN

Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities

NFDIN

National Foundation for Development of Indigenous Nationalities

UNESCO

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec1:viii Sec1:viii

1/4/2008 2:54:22 PM

Part 1

Setting the Scene

The Greater Himalayan Region: A Language ‘Mega Centre’
The greater Himalayan region, which extends for 3,500 km from Afghanistan in thewest to Myanmar in the east, sustains over 150 million people and is home to great
linguistic diversity and many of Asia’s most endangered languages. Moving across theregion in alphabetical order, Afghanistan boasts 47 living languages, Bangladesh ishome to 39, Bhutan has 24, China 235, India 415, Myanmar 108, Nepal 123, and Pakistan
72 (Ethnologue 2005, online edition). The entire Himalayan region is often describedas one of the ten biodiversity ‘mega centres’ of the world. This stretch of mountainous
Asia is also home to one-sixth of all human languages, so the area should be thought ofas a linguistic and cultural ‘mega centre’ as well, and an important site for the common
heritage of humanity (Figure 1).

The Linguistic Wealth of Nepal
The great biological diversity of present-day Nepal is matched by its cultural andlinguistic diversity. Comprising an area of 147,181 square kilometres, with a length of
885 kilometres from east to west and a breadth of 193 kilometres from north to south,
the topography of Nepal is rich and varied. Inhabiting these different climatic andecological zones are 100 officially recognised caste and ethnic groups who speak 92
languages officially recognised by the state and a few further unidentified languages(Yadava 2003) (Figure 2).
The disparity between the language totals published by the Ethnologue, which records
123 languages, and the Government of Nepal, which lists only 92, as well as thenoticeable difference between the number of recorded ethnicities and mother tongues,
is interesting and important. There is no one-to-one correlation between ethnic andlinguistic indicators, illustrated by the simple fact that hill Chhetris and Brahmans bothspeak Nepali as a mother tongue, but are recorded as two distinct caste groups (Figure3). Counting and classifying discrete languages is a complicated, political, and in someways subjective task. Scientific categories such as mutual intelligibility compete with
culturally-specific concepts of group cohesion and identity in all language enumeration
efforts.
According to census data collected in 2001, Nepal’s 92 languages (including Kusunda,a genetic isolate) belong to four language families, an impressively large number for acountry with a small land mass like Nepal. The Indo-Aryan group of the Indo-European
language family is the largest group in terms of speaker numbers in Nepal, at around 80%
I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:1 Sec2:1

1

1/4/2008 2:54:22 PM

Source: CD-ROM (in preparation), based on language data sources found on page 41

Figure 1: Map of endangered minority languages in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region
2

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:2 Sec2:2

1/4/2008 2:54:22 PM

I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:3 Sec2:3

3

1/4/2008 2:54:24 PM

Source: Harka Gurung (2006). Nepal Atlas and Statistics. Himal Books, reprinted by permission

Figure 2: Ethnographic map of Nepal showing the distribution of caste and ethnic groups

Source: The Mountain Institute

Figure 3: Ethnic distribution map of Eastern Nepal
4

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:4 Sec2:4

1/4/2008 2:54:26 PM

(Yadava 2003, p. 141) (Figure 4). The Tibeto-Burman group within the Sino-Tibetan familyof languages is represented by 57 languages in Nepal, the largest number of distinct
mother tongues of any linguistic grouping, but with noticeably less speakers than the
Indo-Aryan group (Figure 5). Two other language families are also found in Nepal: theAustric branch of the Austro-Asiatic family and the Dravidian family, each represented bya small number of languages in the southern belt of the country (Figure 6).
All of these data show that Nepal is not only home to more language families than all ofEurope combined, but also has more distinct and individual languages in one country
than the whole of the European community. Yet Nepal’s increasingly endangered
linguistic diversity is largely lacking from discussions about integrated development in
the country.

The Status of Nepal’s Endangered Languages
While some of Nepal’s languages are thriving, most notably Nepali, which is an
official language, many of Nepal’s minority languages1 lie at various stages on thecontinuum towards eventual extinction. The key measure of a language’s viability
is not the number of people who speak it, but the extent to which children are stilllearning the language as their native tongue. There are many reasons and modalities
by which mother tongues become endangered, including declining speaker numbers(an example of which is Kusunda), the transformation of the traditional habitat ofa linguistic community through deforestation (as in the case of the Raute), or evennatural disasters, such as the landslides which swept away two villages thus almost
entirely devastating the Koi-speaking community in Khotang district (Toba et al. 2002,
p. 260).
More prosaic, if far more influential, reasons for the decline in usage of Nepal’s
mother tongues, include decades of state neglect towards poor, rural ethno-linguistic
communities, and the effectiveness of the Nepali language media in cultivating a senseof national Nepali identity at linguistic, religious, and cultural levels. While state policy
makers may speak of ‘language shift’, for example, from a minority mother tongue tothe national language, members of the affected community may interpret this rather
as encroaching ‘linguicide’. The value judgement lies in the frame of reference andperspective. Changes to linguistic forms and decreased competence in mother tongues
are thorny and political issues.
Language death is often compared to species extinction, and the same metaphors ofpreservation and diversity can be invoked to canvas support for both biodiversity andlanguage preservation programmes. Linguists and community activists have borrowed
their conceptual framework, and even the associated jargon, from the fields of botanyand zoology, and describe languages as lying on a scale from viable to extinct.
In Nepal, a disturbingly large number of the country’s ethnic mother tongues areseverely endangered, and will likely be reduced from communicative vernaculars
to symbolic identity markers within a generation (Figure 7). At the same time, andperhaps even because of the threat, ethnic and linguistic activists within these1

Minority languages are identified as languages spoken by less than 100,000 people.

I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:5 Sec2:5

5

1/4/2008 2:54:27 PM6

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:6 Sec2:6

1/4/2008 2:54:27 PM

Source: CD-ROM (in preparation), based on language data sources found on page 41

Figure 4: Map of minority languages of the Indo-European family in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region

I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:7 Sec2:7

7

1/4/2008 2:54:30 PM

Source: CD-ROM (in preparation), based on language data sources found on page 41

Figure 5: Map of minority languages of the Sino-Tibetan family in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region

8

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:8 Sec2:8

1/4/2008 2:54:32 PM

Source: Harka Gurung (2006). Nepal Atlas and Statistics. Himal Books, printed by permission

Figure 6: Linguistic map of Nepal showing the distribution of spoken languages

I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:9 Sec2:991/4/2008 2:54:33 PM

Source: CD-ROM (in preparation), based on language data sources found on page 41

Figure 7: Map of highly endangered minority languages in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan regioncommunities have embarked on the process of documenting and promoting theirmother tongues through cultural awareness campaigns, ethnic heritage programmes,
and literacy projects. Successful language maintenance efforts ideally combine literacy
and education with an improvement in the economic and political standing of theminority language community (Nettle and Romaine 2000).

Preserving and Promoting Linguistic Diversity in the
Himalayan Region
Why should development workers and scholars be concerned with the extinction ofendangered languages? After all, since 96% of the world’s population speak 4% of
the world’s languages, and over 1,500 languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers, isit feasible or realistic to support minority tongues (Crystal 2000)? Some monolingualEnglish speakers would have us believe that linguistic diversity is incompatible withthe juggernaut of inevitable progress which requires interoperability and smoothinternational communications across national boundaries. This is simply not thecase, particularly in areas such as the Himalayas, where many people are functionallytri- or quadri-lingual, speaking an ethnic or tribal mother tongue at home, a different
language in the local market town, conversing in Nepali at school or in dealings withthe administration, and often using an international language (or two) in dealings withthe outside world. Nepal is a perfect case in point: an individual might speak Chintang
at home, Bantawa in the bazaar, learn Nepali at school, speak Hindi when visiting a
regional city and write in English to chat with friends online. We should not forgetthat the monolingualism of much of the First World is as provincial as it is historicallyanomalous.
While the origins of the extraordinary diversity of human languages are intertwinedwith the evolution of cognition and culture, the spread of modern language families
is a result of historical population movements across continents, and the colonisationof new environmental zones. Human languages are not evenly distributed across theworld: there are relatively few in Europe compared to an abundance in the Pacific, andthe greater Himalayan region is in part home to such linguistic diversity because themountains act as a natural barrier to mobility and communication (Figure 8).
There are four clear reasons for supporting, preserving, and documenting endangered
languages, aside from the fact that in themselves, languages are interesting:•First, each and every language is a celebration of the rich cultural diversity of ourplanet and the extinction of each mother tongue heralds the end of another slice of
cultural uniqueness.

•

Second, every language is an expression of a unique ethnic, social, regional,
cultural identity and worldview, or Weltanschauung, as German philosophers
have called it. When a language dies, the framework through which an individualinterprets and interacts in the world in which he lives goes with it.

•

Third, an individual language is the repository of the history and beliefs of a people,
and these oral traditions are rarely translated into the dominant language when the
tongue in which they were created is on the cusp of disappearance.

10

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:10 Sec2:10

1/4/2008 2:54:35 PM

Figure 8: This map shows the overlapping distribution of the ecoregions and languages spoken
in the countries of the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region. Black dots indicate languages and red dots
indicate endangered languages. Note that areas of high biodiversity coincide with a high number ofdistinct ethnic groups speaking distinct languages. Most of the region’s languages are spoken inareas of rich biological and cultural diversity.

Source: The World’s Biocultural Diversity: People, Languages and Ecosystems. Close up of a map produced
by UNESCO, Terralingua, and World Wildlife Fund for Nature•

Finally, and perhaps most importantly to a conservation and biodiversity readership,
every language encodes a particular subset of fragile human knowledge about
agriculture, botany, medicine, and ecology.

As large multinational pharmaceutical companies are learning to their own financial
gain, small-scale communities living on the margins may hold secrets and valuableknowledge about the workings and uses of plants and natural resources. Onceagain, as these communities become increasingly marginalised and their traditional
livelihoods endangered, the local knowledge which they hold may be lost to posterityin the process. Only in exceptional circumstances are indigenous languages and theknowledge systems which they encode documented, transcribed, and translated for the
benefit of future generations.
I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:11 Sec2:11

11

1/4/2008 2:54:35 PM

Sara Shneiderman

Mother tongues consist of far more than grammar and words. For example, Thangmi(known in Nepali as Thami), a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by an ethnic
community of around 30,000 people in eastern Nepal, is a mine of unique indigenous
terms for local flora and fauna which have medical and ritual value (Turin 2003).
Much of this local knowledge is falling into disuse as fluency in Nepali increases.
When children cease to speak their mother tongue, the oral transmission of specificethnobotanical and medical knowledge also comes to an end. As Rana Bahadur
Thangmi, a local shaman and village leader, poignantly stated in an interview with theauthor a few months before his death: ‘It upsets me that our language is dying and will
likely not be spoken by the next generation. No one will think to translate into Nepali
the knowledge that our forefathers collected in order that our grandchildren may knowwhat we have known.’

The late Rana Bahadur Thangmi, a powerful and respected guru or shaman,
showing the author his topknot (2000).
12

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:12 Sec2:12

1/4/2008 2:54:37 PM

Part II

The Position of Language in Nepal’s
Bio-cultural Context

Language and Ecology: An Intimate Symbiosis

Mark Turin

Linguistic diversity is an integral component in ecological stability and the delicate
fabric of cultural life, and languages, like species, adapt to and reflect theirenvironment. We should not forget that the evolution of a species or a language takes
much longer than its eventual extinction. The Thangmi language, spoken in a highly
mountainous region where topography is challenging, has four semantically distinct
verbs all of which are translated into English as ‘to come’:• yusa ‘to come from above (down the mountain)’• wangsa ‘to come from below (or up the mountain)’• kyelsa ‘to come from level or around a natural obstacle’• rasa ‘to come from an unspecified or unknown direction’.

I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:13 Sec2:13

Cause for hope: after yearsof being forgotten by scholars
and language activists, theendangered Thangmi language
now boasts three dictionaries
all of which were published in
2004.

13

1/4/2008 2:54:39 PM

In such instances, language mirrors ecology, and ecology can also reflect the linguistic
and cultural forms of the people who inhabit a specific niche. The languages andcultures of millions of indigenous peoples of the Himalayas are now endangered in part
because their traditional homelands and ecological habitats are under threat.
In the powerfully written Vanishing Voices (2000), Daniel Nettle and SuzanneRomaine make an explicit link between environmental issues and the survival of
languages. They argue that the extinction of languages is part of the larger picture of
the near-total collapse of the worldwide ecosystem, and suggest that the struggle topreserve environmental resources, such as the rainforests and unique ethnobotanicalknowledge, cannot be separated from the struggle to maintain cultural and linguistic
diversity. The causes of language death and ecological destruction, in their view, arepolitical.
Nettle and Romaine support their argument with an intriguing correlation: language
diversity is inversely related to latitude, and areas rich in languages also tend to be richin ecology and species. As we are slowly discovering, both biodiversity and linguistic
diversity are concentrated between the tropics and in inaccessible environments, suchas the Himalayan region, while diversity of all forms tails off in deserts. Around theworld, there is a high level of co-occurrence of flora, fauna, and languages, and humid
tropical climates, forested areas, and mountainous regions are especially favourable tobiological and linguistic diversification (Figure 9). Data from Nepal appear to support
this trend: the country is home to over 5,400 species of higher plants and 850 species ofbirds, 2.2% and 9.4% of the world’s totals, respectively (Shrestha and Gupta 1993, p. 3).
This particularly high level of biodiversity per unit area is matched by a similar degreeof linguistic variation.
While the language-ecology hypothesis is entirely logical, it remains contentious,with some language activists and scholars arguing that these overlapping trends arecoincidental and causally unrelated. Whatever one’s position on the interrelatedness of
biological and linguistic diversity, one result is uncontested: languages are increasingly
described as valuable ‘resources’ to be protected, promoted, and developed bygovernments. Distinct from but deployed in a similar manner to discussions aboutwater, fossil fuels, and manpower resources, linguistic resources are an integral
component of a nation’s rich, intangible heritage. As discretely summed up by
UNESCO in its universal declaration of 2001, “cultural diversity is as necessary forhumankind as biodiversity is for nature” (UNESCO 2002, Article 1).

Language and the Constitution: Promise versus Delivery
Every modern state must balance the often competing needs of centralisation andconsolidation on the one hand, and support for its minority communities and cultureson the other. In Nepal, as in other poor countries, this struggle can be particularly
intense. A weak infrastructure combines with mountainous topography to makeplanning and integration difficult, and minority causes have historically been
marginalised or even jettisoned in the name of national unity. In the case of Nepal, aprincipal vehicle for such cultural integration and political unity has been the Nepali
language.
14

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:14 Sec2:14

1/4/2008 2:54:39 PM

I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:15 Sec2:15

15

1/4/2008 2:54:40 PM

Source: WWF, UNEP, and Terralingua 2000

Figure 9: Indigenous and Traditional Peoples in the Global 200 Ecoregions

As the Nepalese linguist Chura Mani Bandhu has noted, Nepali made great inroads“first as a lingua franca, then as an official language and ultimately as the national
language” (Bandhu 1989, p. 121). Widely spoken both within Nepal and across large
swathes of northeast India and some of Bhutan, the position of Nepali as a major South
Asian language is assured. The inclusion of Nepali in the Eighth Schedule of the IndianConstitution in 1992, providing governmental recognition for its use in state legislature,
only served to strengthen the position of the language across the region.
Between 1952 and 2001, according to official census statistics from Nepal, thenumber of mother tongue Nepali speakers inside Nepal almost trebled from 4 million
to 11 million (drawn from tables in Yadava 2003, p. 141). Revealingly, while 49% of
the population returned Nepali as their mother tongue in the 2001 census, 53% of
respondents stated that Nepali should be the only official language, compared to 31%
who felt that other languages should also be recognised as official languages, and 16%
who reported that they would like to see minority languages used as official media ofcommunication at the level of local governance (Hachhethu 2004, p. 187).
From the emergence of Nepal as a modern nation-state in 1769, through the Panchayat
rule from 1962-1989, the ruler powers promoted a doctrine of ‘one nation, one culture,
one language’ and the nation building project of that era was intolerant of minority

Poster for International
Mother Language Day
Source: UNESCO

16

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:16 Sec2:16

1/4/2008 2:54:41 PM

languages, much like the Rana era which preceded it. Under Panchayat rule, while
political, educational, developmental and administrative activities helped speakers
of other languages to learn Nepali, little motivation existed for mother tongue Nepali
speakers to learn minority languages.
Until as recently as 1990, it was considered natural and even preferable for Nepal to
be monolingual, with the consequence that minority languages were disparaged andlinguistic rights disregarded. Since the Panchayat era, however, the Nepali government
has made significant progress in recognising the multi-ethnic and multi-lingual natureof the nation. The Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal, codified on November 9, 1990,
and presently under revision, stated that:(1)

The Nepali language in the Devanagari script is the language of thenation of Nepal. The Nepali language shall be the official language.

(2)

All the languages spoken as the mother tongue in the various parts of
Nepal are the national languages of Nepal. (Constitution of Nepal, Part 1,
Article 6 [HMGN 1990])

The ambiguity of the Constitution here is notable: while Nepali is promoted asthe ‘language of the nation’ and the ‘official language’, mother tongues spoken
by indigenous peoples were defined as ‘the national languages of Nepal’. Some
commentators see this distinction as highly nuanced, while others are critical ofwhat they perceive to be an intentional semantic confusion, and reject the claim thatthe 1990 Constitution of Nepal was a robust, modern document which championed
diversity and minority rights.
At the time of going to press, Nepal was once again going through a profound politicaltransition. The popular movement and nationwide strikes which reached a head in
April 2006 ended the direct rule by the palace and helped reinstate the parliament.
The transitional government has presided over the drafting and promulgation of aninterim constitution, including proposals to protect the rights of cultural and linguistic
minorities. Article 5 of Part 1 of the interim constitution addresses the issue of
language, and reads as follows:(1)

All the languages spoken as mother tongues in Nepal are the national
languages of Nepal.

(2)

The Nepali language in the Devanagari script shall be the language of
official business.

(3)

Notwithstanding whatever is written pursuant to clause (2), the use of
mother tongue in local body or office shall not be considered a barrier.
The state shall translate the language used for such purpose into thelanguage of official business for record.

While the interim constitution is a step towards greater recognition of and support for
linguistic diversity, including enshrining the preservation of one’s mother tongue as afundamental right, questions remain about how change will be effectuated. How will
I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:17 Sec2:17

17

1/4/2008 2:54:42 PM

this revised constitution be able to deliver what earlier documents did not? How willpolicy makers ensure delivery of constitutional provisions, and what are the penalties
if they do not? In short, what are the modalities for change? As the following section
makes clear, there are good reasons to be sceptical.

Language and the Law: Linguistic Advocacy and Municipal
Debate
The constitutional ambiguity explained above sets the stage for the key linguistic
tension of modern Nepal. While Nepal’s linguistic minorities have no shortage ofnational and international provisions enshrining their linguistic rights, such groups havelittle confidence in their ability to gain access to, and then effectively use, the Nepali
legal system to defend these rights. Aside from one prominent case discussed below,
language activists have rarely relied on legal provisions to ensure their rights, anddebates about language, ethnicity, and culture are not usually acted out in the courts.
The case in question relates to a well-documented decision made by various local
administrative bodies between August and November 1997 – the Kathmandu
municipality, Dhanusha District Development Committee, and Rajbiraj and Janakpur
municipalities – to use the locally dominant languages of Newari and Maithili,
respectively, as official media of communication in addition to (and not instead of)
Nepali. This right, it was argued, had been enshrined in the Local Self-Governance Actof 1999 which deputed to local bodies the right to use, preserve, and promote local
languages. However, the decision by these local bodies to use regional languages
was legally challenged and cases were filed in the Supreme Court, after which aninterim order was issued on March 17, 1998, prohibiting the use of local and regional
languages in administration. This order led to wide discontent and public resentment
among minority communities, and a number of action committees were promptly
formed to address the ruling.
On June 1, 1999, the Supreme Court nevertheless announced its final verdict andissued a certiorari declaring that the decisions of these local bodies to use regional
languages were unconstitutional and illegal. The court’s verdict raised serious
questions about the sincerity of the government’s commitment to the use of minority
languages in administration and led to further frustration among minority language
communities. Public demonstrations and mass meetings were called, and the Nepal
Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NEFIN) organised a national conference on
linguistic rights on March 16-17, 2000, with support from the International Work Groupon Indigenous Affairs. The proceedings of this conference were published in April 2000.
Four resolutions were adopted during the conference, one of which demanded that:…legal provisions be made to allow the use of all mother-tongues and theverdict of the court be declared void since it runs against the values ofthe present Constitution of Nepal which recognises all mother-tongues as“national languages” and the Local Autonomy Act of 2055 which contains
provisions for the use, preservation and promotion of mother-tongues by
local bodies (Nepal Federation of Nationalities 2000, p. 8).

18

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:18 Sec2:18

1/4/2008 2:54:42 PM

As the example illustrates, many language activists in Nepal have felt powerless toguarantee their rights in the face of government opposition. Moreover, disagreements
exist between different indigenous peoples’ movements regarding the correct pathto achieve political equity and social equality. At opposing ends of the continuum
are advocates who propose working to change the system from within, and militantorganisations who have allied themselves with the Maoist movement, believing thatparliamentary debate will not deliver practical results at the grassroots level. The
middle ground, however, is occupied by a number of organisations who support
minority rights but who are fast losing faith in the government’s desire to bring about
any meaningful change.

Bikash Karki

There is widespread concern among ethnic activists and rural villagers alike that
despite the countless legal provisions towards their fundamental rights, an institutional
inertia exists regarding the emotive issues of mother tongue education and the accessof minority communities to positions in government and administration. Indigenous
people, particularly in rural areas poorly serviced by state infrastructure, have very
limited access to existing legal provisions to defend their rights, and are often
intimidated by the very institutions which are meant to represent and protect them.

I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:19 Sec2:19

A woman protests outside
Parliament in February 2007.
Her placard reads: “Let’s
enforce a trilingual language
policy recognising all languages
as official languages...”19

1/4/2008 2:54:42 PM

While these issues are complex, there are three principal reasons why indigenous
people rarely resort to legal means to defend their rights. First, the machinery of
government is still primarily controlled by ‘high caste’ Hindu groups who have held
power for the last 250 years and have little incentive to relinquish control. Second,
educated indigenous peoples in both urban and rural Nepal are reluctant to use official
channels – legal or administrative – to redress inequalities since they believe thesystem to be weighed against their interests and consider their chances of successto be limited. This is an understandable concern, particularly since fluency in spoken
Nepali and a high degree of literacy are prerequisites for legal exchange. These areskills which many indigenous people still do not have. As illustrated above by therulings against Newar and Maithili, when indigenous activists have tried to use legal
channels to pursue their rights, they have been unsuccessful. Third, many indigenous
peoples and linguistic minorities in rural areas are simply not aware of their rights, orif they are, they have little practical knowledge of how and where to assert them. The
above factors, combined with continued social and linguistic discrimination, haveinhibited the development and inclusion of minority communities and indigenous
peoples in Nepal’s legal processes.
Given the disjuncture between the legal and constitutional provisions for linguistic
equality on the one hand, and the reality of the overwhelming dominance of Nepali on
the other, the dejection of activist groups representing minority ethnic and linguistic
communities is understandable. The crisis lies not in the formulation of policy or law,
but rather in the lack of desire of the governing classes to change the status quo.
Since most obstacles to asserting linguistic rights relate to implementation, concerned
groups may do better to focus their energies on offering a pragmatic roadmap forachieving their goals within the existing framework of the new constitution rather thanformulating new bills, acts, and amendments.

Language and the Census: Who is Being Counted and Why?
While a regular and detailed national census is an essential tool for understanding thecomposition of a nation, censuses are often manipulated and politically contested.
As Bernard Cohen wrote about the 1931 Indian census, “the consciousness of thesignificance of the census operation had reached a point where Indians…set out toinfluence the answers which people would have given in the census” (1987, p. 249-250).
Since many countries do not even include questions about language or ethnicity intheir surveys out of fear of the political ramifications of research in such sensitive
areas, the Central Bureau of Statistics in Nepal should be commended for collecting
information on mother tongue and ethnicity in recent decades. Many more questions
need to be asked before we can derive meaningful results from the data that the census
provides. In particular, it would be helpful to know more about the usual language ofthe home, subsidiary languages spoken, practical multilingualism, and disaggregateddata distinguishing between reading skills and writing skills in any given language.
The challenges of census-taking in Nepal are accentuated by a weak information
infrastructure, the extremity of the physical terrain, a dearth of motorable roads, and thecultural prejudices of some of the ruling elite. The disjuncture between urban educated20

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:20 Sec2:20

1/4/2008 2:54:44 PM

Nepalis and their often semi-literate rural cousins is stark, and both literal andfigurative miscommunications are common when the former ask potentially invasivequestions of the latter. Walks of up to a week from roadheads to access alpine valleys
are also known to discourage census collectors from actually visiting these areas,
and the decade-long Maoist insurgency only served to further deter enumerators fromvisiting more remote regions where the state could not guarantee their security.
The first census of Nepal was conducted in 1911 with the aim of surveying population
growth, migration, and social structure. Thereafter, the first systematic census was
conducted between 1952 and 1954, and there have been regular census enumerations
every decade since then.

Stephen A. Edwards

There is a surprisingly high variation in the number of languages reported in thecensuses of Nepal since the 1950s: 44 languages were reported in 1952-1954, 36 in
1961, 17 in 1971, 18 in 1981, 32 in 1991, and 92 in 2001. This massive oscillation is notindicative of the actual state of languages spoken in Nepal, but reflects rather thechanging political ideologies of the nation-state over the last half century and a top
down perspective on the acceptability of linguistic diversity. Census statistics areroutinely conscripted to argue for both monolingual and multilingual visions of Nepal,
even when each side agrees that the data remain unreliable.

Beware this mother tongue!

The 2001 census was by far the most rigorously enumerated poll to date, with datacollected on both ethnicity and language. Two specific questions pertaining tolanguage were asked: Which language do you speak as a mother tongue, and which
language do you speak as a second language? The guidelines issued by the Central
Bureau of Statistics define ‘mother tongue’ as “the language acquired first by children
in their childhood from their parents and used in their households since they start
speaking”, while ‘second language’ is defined as “any language other than the mothertongue learned and used to speak with neighbours” (Yadava 2003, p. 138).
I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:21 Sec2:21

21

1/4/2008 2:54:44 PM

Working with the baseline data collected in the 2001 census, a number of recent
publications (see Gurung 2006; Gurung, Gurung and Chidi 2006) have disaggregated thefindings to produce charts and maps which show the distribution of different speechand ethnic communities across Nepal’s 75 districts. Such granular data is essential
for the effective implementation of central government policy and for targeting needygroups in integrated development programmes.
It is encouraging to see that the Nepali authorities have come to appreciate thedifference between language and ethnicity, and that the census enumerates both.
In previous decadal censuses, language data came to serve as a substitute forenumerating ethnicity. Now that this obstacle has been overcome, the Central Bureauof Statistics should give serious thought to adding further questions on bilingualism
and multilingualism in the census of 2011. Further work is also needed to make senseof the over 160,000 speakers whose languages the 2001 census returned as ‘unknown’.
While apparently insignificant from a statistical viewpoint, it is highly likely that thisamalgam contains a number of endangered and poorly documented languages. The
clarification of such data will help to provide a more vivid and realistic picture oflanguage use in modern Nepal.

Language and Media: Nepal’s Minority Voices on Air
and in Print
The freedoms enshrined in Nepal’s 1990 Constitution led to a boom in all forms of
media production, but particularly in the print sector and FM radio. Ethnic and linguistic
minorities have used media to great effect, with a plethora of journals, newspapers,
and magazines in local languages now available in Kathmandu and in district centres.
Even centrally-run media providers have sought to catch up with the informal andprivate sectors, with state-owned Radio Nepal broadcasting news bulletins in 18 mothertongues including Hindi, Magar, Maithili, Newar, and Tamang, and Nepal Television(NTV) producing a limited number of small-screen tele-films in local languages.
This freedom of linguistic expression has helped instill a sense of civic and community
pride in local languages and minority mother tongues, and marked a genuine change ofcourse from the Panchayat-era policy which discouraged dissemination of informationin any language other than Nepali. To this day, however, Nepal is often portrayed as anation formed in large part through a common language: Nepali.
Some of the most exciting recent developments in media have emerged in thedigital sector. Nepali language information and communication technologies (ICTs)
have blossomed over the last decade, with software localisation projects and newly
standardised Nepali Unicode fonts making it easier for first-time computer users who
have little or no literacy in English to gain basic computing skills in Nepali. While
access to ICT infrastructure is still limited to a tiny percentage of Nepal’s population,
the completion of the East-West information superhighway and the deployment of VSATInternet access in some remote district capitals are signs that access is being extended
to those on the disadvantaged side of the Nepal’s digital divide (Pandey and Shrestha2005).

22

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:22 Sec2:22

1/4/2008 2:54:45 PM

It remains to be seen whether minority language communities across Nepal will
embrace the new possibilities afforded by these technologies, but the signs areencouraging. A number of language activists are already constructing databases oflexical corpora making use of the Devanagari Unicode. While the Devanagari keyboard
layout and the associated fonts were designed for rendering Nepali, they can be easily
retasked to represent many of Nepal’s minority mother tongues whose speakers areworking towards standardisation and creating literacy materials. The dual processesof standardisation and lexical extension (the creation of new words) are essential
components in ensuring the ongoing viability and sustainability of indigenous
speech forms. Whether it be pop music in Newari, Tamang language publications,or political speeches in Maithili, Nepal’s languages need to embrace new arenas ofcommunication and all forms of media to survive. While the government can definitely
provide a supportive backdrop for such developments to take place, the maintenanceand growth of local speech forms requires clear commitment from the community inwhich the heritage language is valued. The long-term future of these languages hinges
in large part on education policy, which is discussed in the following section.

An example of Nepali Unicode localisation
Source: Google.com 2007

Language and Education: the Mother Tongue Debate
Around 42% or 476 million of the world’s illiterate people speak minority languages andlive in countries where children are for the most part not taught in their mother tongues(UNESCO 2003a). Nepal is one such country.
The issue of mother tongue education is highly politicised in Nepal, in part because
many assumptions about the role of the Nepali state are attached to the various
positions on this topic. Mother tongue education means different things to its
supporters and detractors: the former see it as a way to make schools more inclusive
and receptive to the needs of children from non-Nepali speaking backgrounds, while
the latter fear that mother tongue medium instruction would be the first step towards
eventual federalism and the end of a united Nepal.
I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:23 Sec2:23

23

1/4/2008 2:54:45 PM

To contextualise the issue, we should recall that the New Education Plan of 1971
discouraged any language other than Nepali as the medium of instruction in schools.
As illustrated by the following citation from the National Education Planning
Commission report, the educational policy of the preceding era also overwhelmingly
favoured Nepali:“…And it should be emphasised that if Nepali is to become the true
national language, then we must insist that its use be enforced in
the primary school... Local dialects and tongues, other than standard
Nepali, should be vanished [recte banished] from the school andplayground as early as possible in the life of the child.”
College of Education (1956, p. 97) as cited in Gurung (2003)

After 1990, on paper at least, education policy became more favourably disposed to
linguistic diversity. Article 18 of the 1990 Constitution stated that ‘each community
shall have the right to operate schools up to the primary level in its own mother tongue
for imparting education to its children’, even though this provision remains largely
unimplemented to this day.
Why is mother tongue education an issue at all? Instead of learning Gurung andBhojpuri at school, should children who speak minority languages at home not betaught Nepali and English to give them the very tools they need to compete withmother tongue Nepali speakers? Would not focusing on their ethnic heritage just denydisadvantaged students access to higher learning and eventual positions of power? The
counter arguments to these challenging and provocative critiques are as follows. At the
primary level at least, the verdict is clear. As John Daniel, Assistant Director-General for
Education in UNESCO, has written:“Years of research have shown that children who begin their education in
their mother tongue make a better start, and continue to perform better,
than those for whom school starts with a new language. The same applies
to adults seeking to become literate.” (UNESCO 2003a)
The high rate of school absenteeism and drop-outs among the youngest students fromnon-Nepali speaking backgrounds has been correlated to the challenges they face in a
culturally and linguistically alien classroom (HMGN 2003). How can a Buddhist Tamang
girl feel included and represented in a school environment which promotes Hindu
Nepali-speaking male ideals? A classroom context in which cultural heritage is valued
and where the use of a child’s mother tongue provides a safe and trusted setting forlearning must be the ideal for which we strive.
Curriculum development is an important element in the development of mother tongue
language materials. Some government-funded mother tongue initiatives have simply
translated the Nepali language primary school books into minority languages, without
regard for cultural difference. Such schemes are doomed to fail, since the content of aschool book must reflect the cultural values of its students.
As for the suggestion that if a student learns through his or her mother tongue, he or
she won’t learn the national language – let alone any international language – properly,
we would do well to remember that most people are multilingual and that young minds
24

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:24 Sec2:24

1/4/2008 2:54:46 PM

Educating Babel: the mother tongue dilemma. While studies show that students learn better
through their mother tongue, the language has to be taught in school for the benefits to bereaped. This is rarely the case with minority languages.

Source: Education Today, The Newsletter of UNESCO’s Education Sector, Number 6 July-September
2003, pages 4-5, copyright Erik Staal, printed by permission

have an amazing capacity to learn, absorb, and process language. In short, it is not aquestion of either the national language or the mother tongue, since many languages
may be taught simultaneously. Moreover, a student’s failure to learn three languages
to a high standard is primarily a failure of instruction and educational policy, not one ofcurricular overload, as the Education for All global monitoring reports have shown.

Language and Gender: the Central Role of Women
Across the greater Himalayan region, a range of data demonstrate that women retain
fluency in their mother tongue for longer than men, but are on the whole less literate(see Census 2001 [HMGN National Planning Commission Secretariat 2003]). Whilemen from disadvantaged mountain areas commonly engage in trade with othercommunities or seek wage labour in local centres and neighbouring states, thereby
learning regional lingua francas and foreign languages, women are still in many cases
the natural resource managers of a community. Whether collecting firewood and forest
products, fetching water, working the fields, or raising children, women across Nepal
have plenty of cause to use their indigenous language in daily life.
The five-year Education for All Project recommended that Nepal take steps to ensurethat rural primary schools are staffed by more local women teachers who can explain
words and concepts using the mother tongue of the students as a means of helping
them transition to functional bilingualism. This would require a change of mindset:
dispensing with the prevailing belief that Nepal’s unwritten indigenous languages are
I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:25 Sec2:25

25

1/4/2008 2:54:46 PM

backward, primitive, and somehow shameful, and rather embracing ethnic languages
as symbols of diversity and indigenous knowledge. The National Foundation for theDevelopment of Indigenous Nationalities (NFDIN) is leading by example by training 200
indigenous women to work in schools in their own communities.
Major questions remain, however, about how patterns of language use and competence
relate to gender. To date, most literacy programmes for adult women have focused onachieving basic numeracy and literacy in Nepali, not in mother tongues. The resultsof such initiatives leave women from indigenous backgrounds in Nepal speaking theirmother tongue at home and in the fields, but using Nepali to count, write lists andconverse with outsiders. Apart from a few more prominent tongues, most of Nepal’s
minority languages have not yet made the transition from languages of the home andhearth to languages of status and prestige used in the workplace.

Language and Conflict: Maoists, Politics, and Sanskrit
The deployment of language issues in public arenas, whether ethnic or national, canquickly become very politicised. The clamouring of linguistic minorities in Nepal for
education in their mother tongues is as much about basic linguistic rights as it is acall for recognition and participation in the modern nation-state. Ethnic and linguistic
differences are also quick to be invoked in times of conflict.
In Nepal, the violent conflict between the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and state
security forces which claimed over 15,000 lives between 1996 and 2006, tapped into thepre-existing concerns of ethnic and linguistic minorities. It is beyond a doubt that themarginalisation of Nepal’s disadvantaged communities and ethnic groups is one of theroot causes of the Maoist insurgency. The Maoists have been very adept at co-opting
the existing grievances of indigenous peoples and incorporating them into their overall
political struggle for a constituent assembly and radical leftist reforms. In the 40-point
demands they submitted to the government in 1996, the Maoist leadership addressed
the basic rights of indigenous peoples and their mother tongues, arguing for local
autonomy for communities where ethnic peoples are dominant, and the provision of
education in the mother tongue through secondary school.
The teaching of Sanskrit is also an inflammatory topic in contemporary Nepal. Sanskrit,
the liturgical and classical language of India, to which modern spoken languages
such as Hindi and Nepali are related, is intimately associated with Hindu Nepali
identity. In both popular and scholarly writings, the Sanskrit language is often held up
as the pinnacle of sophistication, with Nepali, as its offspring, portrayed as similarly
cultured. Take as one example a comment by Professor Chura Mani Bandhu: “Nepali
is developed from Sanskrit – the cultured language” (1989, p. 122). By implication,
languages which are not Sanskrit-related are therefore not cultured, or at least lower on
this imagined scale.
It is little surprise, then, that anti-Sanskritism has been one of the rallying cries ofleftist groups, and one which finds favour with almost all indigenous people who see
Sanskrit as the linguistic embodiment of a hegemonic heritage which they do notshare. Sanskrit was, until recently, the only language in Nepal for which government
scholarships were available for university-level study, despite the fact that Sanskrit can
26

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:26 Sec2:26

1/4/2008 2:54:47 PM

not really be counted as a mother tongue vernacular for anyone in Nepal. This adds
insult to injury for the indigenous peoples and linguistic minorities of Nepal, many ofwhom are still smarting from the imposition of Nepali as the national language in the1990 constitution and the introduction of compulsory Sanskrit up to high school level.

Language and Culture: Identity in Difference“To be human you must have a tribe. To have a tribe you must have a mother tongue”
stated a Shona tribesman, when asked by the fieldworker John Hofman for a definitionof his identity (1977, p. 289). While not a universal truth, this assertion encapsulates awidespread sentiment held by both indigenous peoples – and those who study them– that language and identity are inextricably linked.
In the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2001), languages arerecognised as forming an integral part of a people’s cultural and historical identity.
In Nepal, linguistic and cultural identities are closely interwoven, and many of thecountry’s indigenous peoples define themselves in large part according to the language
they speak. Language is often used as a symbolic badge of membership in a particularcommunity, and is a prominent emblem of pride in one’s social or ethnic identity.
NFDIN also views the existence of a specific and unique language as one of the primary
criteria for identifying an ethnic group or ‘adibasi janajati’, and the Foundation is
implementing a range of policies to support endangered and indigenous languages.
Dictionary projects are particularly popular, since the products have both practicalbenefits and symbolic capital: linguistic minorities can canvas central and local
government for mother tongue education more effectively when a lexical corpus has
been prepared and the process of standardising an unwritten language is alreadyunderway.
However, the relationship between indigenous peoples and the languages they speak
is highly varied and naturally diverse. In Nepal, these relationships can be divided into
three categories:

Mark Turin

The Sikkim Herald - thegovernment newspaperof the Indian state of
Sikkim - published in
11 officially recognised
languages. Althoughlargely symbolic, suchinitiatives are important.

I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:27 Sec2:27

27

1/4/2008 2:54:47 PM

(1) Situations in which a one-to-one correspondence exists between a community andtheir language, as among the Chepang, Dhimal, Raute, and Thami/Thangmi;(2) Situations in which members of one putative community speak several languages;
for example, the members of the Rai-Kiranti community are often, albeit
erroneously, considered to constitute a single ethnic group, but they speak arange of at least fifteen mutually unintelligible languages such as Bantawa,
Chamling, Chintang, Dumi, Kulung, Puma, Sampang, and Thulung; and(3) Situations in which several distinct ethnic communities speak a single language,
such as Newar, with dialectal variations.
The one-to-one correlation between language and culture as outlined in (1) above iseasier for census enumerators and also facilitates the development and preparationof textbooks. Situations (2) and (3) are more complex, however, both in terms ofenumeration and in the creation of culturally-appropriate pedagogical materials.

28

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:28 Sec2:28

1/4/2008 2:54:48 PM

Part 3

Sustainable Futures: Promotion ofDiversity at all Levels

The preservation of a language in its fullest sense entails the maintenance of the
speech community. Reversing language death therefore requires the preservation of
the culture and habitat in which a language is spoken. While many of the languages
spoken as mother tongues in the Himalayas today will likely only survive as second
languages in the coming years, that is in itself no small feat. Supporting minority
languages and halting linguistic decline must become an integral element in securing
the sustainable livelihoods of diverse mountain peoples. Integrated development
programmes which focus on the vulnerability of marginalised peoples in the Hindu
Kush-Himalayan region should introduce a component of support for the languages
which are presently under threat.

Language Policy in Neighbouring Himalayan States
Given the incredible linguistic diversity of the region, it is worth comparing how other
Himalayan states do, or do not, address the linguistic rights of minority language
communities within their borders. This comparative perspective is instructive as the
linguistic provisions in Nepal’s new interim constitution are being framed.
Article 3 of the Constitution of Bangladesh as adopted on 4 November 1972 definesthe ‘state language of the Republic’ as Bangla. Article 1.8 of the entirely bilingual(Dzongkha and English) Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan of 2005 clearly statesthat ‘Dzongkha is the National Language of Bhutan’. The Constitution of Pakistan,adopted on 10 April 1973, is similarly unambiguous on the importance of its national
language in promoting unity: ‘the national language of Pakistan is Urdu, andarrangements shall be made for its being used for official and other purposes’ (Article
251.1). However, unlike Bangladesh and Bhutan, the Constitution of Pakistan accepts
that ‘the English language may be used for official purposes’ until the transition to
Urdu is complete, and that provincial assemblies may ‘by law prescribe measures forthe teaching, promotion and use of a provincial language in addition to the national
language’ (Article 251.3).
While the laws of Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Pakistan promote a monolingual national
identity, the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China adopted on 4 December
1982 is in text at least more tolerant of minority languages. While the state ‘promotes
the nationwide use of Putonghua [Mandarin]’ according to Article 19, ‘people of
all nationalities have the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written
I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:29 Sec2:29

29

1/4/2008 2:54:48 PM

languages, and to preserve or reform their own ways and customs’ particularly inautonomous areas or in local government (Articles 4 and 21).
The Republic of India has a more nuanced view of linguistic diversity, particularlycompared to its regional neighbours, and many clauses of its constitution, mostrecently updated in 1996, allude to or explicitly specify the rights of minority language
communities. Although Article 343 of the Constitution states that the ‘official languageof the Union shall be Hindi in the Devanagari script’, parliamentary business may also
be conducted in English (Article 120). Across India, however, individual states haveconsiderable control over which languages should be used as the official media of statelegislative and administrative business, and the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution
lists 21 languages which have been officially endorsed by the central government aslanguages of state communication.
Looking at constitutional and legal provisions alone, then, Nepal appears to boast
a fairly forward-looking policy with regard to minority languages, particularly whencompared to its neighbours. It can be argued that smaller nations, almost by definition,must strive to foster linguistic unity – in the manner that Bhutan is attempting – toavoid balkanisation and ethnic strife. Large nation states, such as China and India,
being at once so vast and heterogeneous, have little choice but to tolerate and evenencourage local languages as tools of administration and education.
Another conclusion which might be drawn is that constitutional ambiguity is ashrewd form of governance. Ram Kumar Dahal, writing on the multiplicity of speechcommunities in India, notes that the aim of including English as the ‘auxiliary
language for at least fifteen years’ was to help standardise and institutionalise Hindi‘all over India’ (2000, p. 156-157). India’s failure to achieve this goal has resulted in
two languages of administration, education, and prestige, best illustrated by the kindof code-switching and rampant Hindi-English bilingualism which is so often seen in
Bollywood films.

Signs of Hope: Projects Underway in Nepal and theHimalayas
To date, there are no active projects on languages and livelihoods in the Hindu KushHimalayan region which interweave biological and cultural diversity with the aim ofbuilding sustainable futures for disadvantaged mountain communities. The Culture,
Equity, Gender and Governance Programme (CEGG) at ICIMOD, which promotes
the equality and empowerment of vulnerable mountain peoples for enhanced social
security and reduced conflict, is planning to introduce a layer of project support
for linguistic and cultural diversity to initiatives previously focused exclusively on
biological and ecological diversity.
This author has been involved in a recent ICIMOD initiative to develop an atlas ofminority languages of the Himalayas. Using scalable vector graphics (SVG) and
JavaScript, this digital interactive Atlas of Minority Languages of the greater Himalayas
allows users to search and retrieve data on endangered mother tongues in the region.
The central interface is a scalable and zoomable map of the administrative districts
30

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:30 Sec2:30

1/4/2008 2:54:48 PM

Mark Turin

Welcome to ICIMOD...in eight different languages. The sign at the entrance to the old office
gives an indication of the multilingualism and linguistic diversity of the 140 staff.

of all ICIMOD member nations onto which cities and rivers can be overlaid. The tools
allow users to select from a list of language families or from individual languages, andto see in which districts they are spoken. More information about each language and its
distribution, the number of speakers and its endangered status are provided. The Atlas
is being prepared as a CD-ROM and web resource (Figures 10, 11, 12). Only languages
spoken by under 100,000 speakers have been included and mapped in this Atlas, since
the focus is on marginalised or vulnerable speech forms.
As one way of reaching out to the multilingual base of its constituents at the grassroots
level, ICIMOD produced a brochure on the International Year of the Mountains (IYM) in
four languages of the Hindu Kush-Himalayas: Chinese, English, Hindi, and Nepali, andhas a welcome sign in eight regional languages (see above).
Terralingua <www.terralingua.org> supports the integrated protection, maintenance,and restoration of the world’s biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity throughan innovative programme of research, education, policy, and on-the-ground action.
Collaborating with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and UNESCO, Terralingua staff
have authored a number of excellent reports and maps on biocultural diversity andindigenous and traditional peoples in the world’s 200 global ecoregions. The Central
Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, India, recently announced that it is embarking
on a new Linguistic Survey of India in 2007. A massive exercise involving at least
10,000 language and linguistic experts, the survey – the first in post-Independence
India – will be conducted over a period of 10 years at a cost of IRs 280 crore (IRs 2.8
billion).2 The survey is expected to examine the different speech varieties in the country,
their structures, functions, scripts, history and demography as well as their spread,including diasporas, literacy and education, literature and all the linguistic artefacts,and media products that these speech varieties produce.
2

USD 71.7 million approx. as of 2007

I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:31 Sec2:31

31

1/4/2008 2:54:49 PM

Figure 10: Linguistic Diversity: An Atlas of Endangered Languages in the Himalayas (in preparation as a CD-ROM and web resource)
32

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:32 Sec2:32

1/4/2008 2:54:50 PM

I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:33 Sec2:33

33

1/4/2008 2:54:51 PM

Source: CD-ROM (in preparation), based on language data sources found on page 41

Figure 11: Map of minority languages by district in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region

Source: CD-ROM (in preparation), based on language data sources found on page 41

Figure 12: Map of density of minority languages in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region
34

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:34 Sec2:34

1/4/2008 2:54:53 PM

The British Department for International Development (DFID), through its Enabling
State Programme (ESP), recently provided a substantial three-year grant to the Nepal
Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NEFIN) to support the empowerment of
Nepal’s marginalised ethnic groups. Entitled the Janajati (indigenous ethnic group)
Empowerment Project (JEP), the programme has the explicit purpose of increasing
the participation of Nepal’s disadvantaged ethnic peoples in socioeconomic andpolitical processes at central and district levels. Focusing on local capacity building
and strengthening civil society networks, JEP proposes to preserve and further develop
Nepal’s ethnic languages and help advocate for linguistic rights. Following on from
JEP, NEFIN has been granted substantial funding in the form of the Janajati Socialand Economic Empowerment Project (JANASEEP). The project is funded by European
Commission and will be jointly implemented by NEFIN and CARE Nepal. The project
aims to enhance economic and livelihood opportunities through empowermentof Dhanuk, Thami, and Surel Janajatis in Dhanusha and Dolakha districts, with aparticular focus on the preservation of linguistic and cultural forms.
In terms of research output, the Central Department of Linguistics in Nepal has
embarked upon an ambitious interdisciplinary project known as the Linguistic Surveyof Nepal (LINSUN) which will identify and analyse Nepal’s languages to produce
an encyclopaedia and an archive for linguistic data on endangered languages. The
Chintang and Puma Documentation Project, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation andadministered jointly by the University of Leipzig in Germany and Tribhuvan University in
Nepal, is working on the linguistic and ethnographic documentation of two endangered
Kiranti languages of Nepal. The core objective of the project is to provide audiovisual
documentation of language practice along with rich linguistic and ethnographic
description. With financial assistance from the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages
Project (HRELP) at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the Central Departmentof Linguistics has recently embarked on a new project to document Baram, a seriously
endangered language of central Nepal, for its preservation and promotion.
Language revitalisation campaigns aim to increase the prestige, wealth, and powerof speakers of endangered mother tongues, to give the language a strong presence inthe educational system, and to provide the language with a written form to encourage
literacy and improve access to electronic technology. Linguistic diversity is, after all, thehuman store of historically acquired knowledge about how to use and maintain some of
the world’s most vulnerable and biologically diverse environments.
As the writers of a hard-hitting UNESCO report conclude, “If during the next century welose more than half of our languages, we also seriously undermine our chances for lifeon Earth. From this perspective, fostering the health and vigour of ecosystems is one
and the same goal as fostering the health and vigour of human societies, their cultures,and their languages. We need an integrated biocultural approach to the planet’s
environmental crisis” (UNESCO 2003b, p. 44). Biocultural development projects needto involve and mobilise communities to revalue indigenous languages. Nowhere is thismore the case than Nepal, where the country’s vanishing voices are dangerously close
to disappearing forever, taking with them much of the cultural heritage that makes theHimalayan region so unique.

I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:35 Sec2:35

35

1/4/2008 2:54:55 PM

Web Resources

The World Wide Web is increasingly becoming a research tool through which
publications, archives and legal documents can be conveniently accessed. Here, alist of informative and helpful websites is provided for interested readers. Due to theimpermanent nature of Internet resources, however, the sustainability of the URLs
cannot be guaranteed.
Mapping Linguistic Diversity: An Atlas of Endangered Languages in the Himalayas,
ICIMOD (on CD and online, in preparation)
Biodiversity Hotspots
By Conservation International, a website devoted to areas of great biodiversity
http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org/xp/Hotspots/
Chintang and Puma Documentation Project (CPDP)
A project aiming at the linguistic and ethnographic documentation of two endangered
Kiranti languages of Nepal
http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~ff/cpdp/
Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal 2047 (1990)
http://inic.utexas.edu/asnic/countries/nepal/nepalconstitution.html
Digital Himalaya
A project developing digital collection, storage, and distribution strategies for
multimedia anthropological content from the Himalayan region
http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/
Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL)A US National Science Foundation (NSF) funded programme
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2004/nsf04605/nsf04605.htm
Documentation of Endangered Languages (DoBeS)
A Volkswagen Foundation initiative to document the world’s endangered languages
http://www.mpi.nl/DOBESElectronic Metastructure for Endangered Language Data (E-MELD)
To aid in the preservation of endangered languages data and documentation
http://emeld.org/index.cfm
Endangered Language Fund (ELF)
Supporting endangered language preservation and documentation projects
http://www.endangeredlanguagefund.org/
I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:37 Sec2:37

37

1/4/2008 2:54:56 PM

Ethnologue: Languages of the WorldAn encyclopaedic reference work cataloguing all of the world’s 6,912 known living
languages
http://www.ethnologue.org/
Foundation for Endangered Languages
To support, enable, and assist the documentation, protection, and promotion ofendangered languages
http://www.ogmios.org/home.htm
Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project (HRELP)
A documentation, academic, and archiving project based at the School of Oriental andAfrican Studies, University of London
http://www.hrelp.org/
Himalayan Languages ProjectA programme of ongoing linguistic research on hitherto undescribed and little known
languages indigenous to the Himalayan region
http://213.207.98.211/himalaya/
Himalayan Linguistics
A free refereed web journal and archive devoted to the study of the languages of theHimalayas
http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/HimalayanLinguistics/
SIL International: Endangered Languages
http://www.sil.org/sociolx/ndg-lg-home.html
UNESCO Endangered Languages Programme
Culture > Intangible Heritage > Endangered Languages
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=8270&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_
SECTION=201.html
World Congress on Language Policies
http://www.linguapax.org/congres/indexang.html

38

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:38 Sec2:38

1/4/2008 2:54:56 PM

Bibliography

Bandhu, C.M. (1989) ‘The Role of the Nepali Language in Establishing the National
Unity and Identity of Nepal.’ In Kailash - Journal of Himalayan Studies, 15(3-4): 121133
Cohen, B. (1987) ‘The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia.’ In An
Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays. Oxford: Oxford University
Press
Crystal, D. (2000) Language Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Dahal, R.K. (2000) ‘Language Politics in Nepal.’ In Contributions to Nepalese Studies,27(2): 155-190
Eagle, S. (1999) ‘The Language Situation in Nepal.’ In Journal of Multilingual andMulticultural Development, 20(4-5): 272 - 327
Gordon, R.G. Jr., (ed) (2005) Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 15th edition. Dallas:
Summer Institute of Linguistics
Gurung, H. (ed) (2006) Nepal: Atlas and Statistics. Kathmandu: Himal Books
Gurung, H.; Gurung Y.; Chidi C.L. (2006) Nepal Atlas of Ethnic and Caste Groups.
Kathmandu: National Foundation for Development of Indigenous Nationalities
Gurung, H.; Gurung Y.; Chidi C.L. (2006) Nepal Atlas of Language Groups. Kathmandu:
National Foundation for Development of Indigenous Nationalities
Gurung, Y.B. (2003) Indigenous Peoples Development Plan for Rural Water Supply andSanitation (RWSS-II). Kathmandu: Institute for Social and Gender Equality
Hachhethu, K. (2004) State of Democracy in Nepal. Kathmandu: SDSA/N andInternational IDEAHMGN (1990) Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal, V.S. 2047 [1990]. Kathmandu: His
Majesty’s Government of Nepal
HMGN (2003) Education for All 2004-2009: Core Document (17 November 2003).
Kathmandu: His Majesty’s Government of Nepal, Ministry of Education and Sports
HMGN National Planning Commission Secretariat (2003) Population Monograph of
Nepal, Volumes I and II. Kathmandu: Central Bureau of Statistics
Hofman, J.E. (1977) ‘Language Attitudes in Rhodesia.’ In Fishman, J.A.; Copper, R.L.;
Conrad, A.W. (eds) The Spread of English: The Sociology of English as an Additional
Language, pp 277-301. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House Publishers
Lawoti, M. (2003) Inclusive Democratic Institutions in Nepal. Paper presented at ‘The
Agenda of Transformation: Inclusion in Nepali Democracy’ conference, 24-26 April,
2003, Social Science Baha, Kathmandu

I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:39 Sec2:39

39

1/4/2008 2:54:56 PM

National Language Policy Recommendation Committee (V.S. 2050) [1993-94]. Report of
the National Language Policy Recommendation Committee and Nepal’s Linguistic
Status. Kathmandu: Royal Nepal Academy [in Nepali]
Nepal Federation of Nationalities (2000) Proceedings of the National Conference on
Linguistic Rights in Nepal. Kathmandu: Triyuga Offset Press
Nettle, D.; Romaine, S. (2000) Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World’s
Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Nettle, D. (1999) Linguistic Diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Ostler, N. (2005) Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. New York:
Harper Collins Publishers
Pandey, S.; Shrestha, B. (2005) ‘.np Nepal.’ In Digital Review of Asia Pacific 2005/2006:
175-180
Shrestha, T.B.; Gupta, V.N.P. (1993) ‘Biodiversity Profile and Conservation Strategy
in Nepal.’ In Dahal, M.K.; Dahal, D.R. (eds) Environment and Sustainable
Development: Issues in Nepalese Perspective, pp 1-11. Kathmandu: Nepal
Foundation for Advanced Studies
Sonntag, S.K. (2001) ‘The Politics of Determining Criteria for the Languages of
Education in Nepal.’ In Fleiner, T.; Nelde, P.H.; Turi, J-G. (eds) Droit et langue(s)d’enseignment: Law and Language(s) of Education, pp 161-174. Bâle: Helbing and
Lichtenhahn
Toba, S.; Toba, I.; Rai, N.K. (2002) UNESCO Language Survey Report: Nepal.
Kathmandu: UNESCO
Turin, M. (2003) ‘Ethnobotanical Notes on Thangmi Plant Names and Their Medicinaland Ritual Uses.’ In Contributions to Nepalese Studies, 30(1): 19-52
Turin, M. (2005) ‘Language Endangerment and Linguistic Rights in the Himalayas: A
Case Study from Nepal.’ In Mountain Research and Development, 25(1): 4-9
Turin, M. (2006) ‘Minority Language Policies and Politics in Nepal.’ In Saxena, A.; Borin,
L. (eds) Lesser-Known Languages of South Asia: Status and Policies, Case Studies
and Applications of Information Technology, pp 61-72. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
Turin, M. (2007) ‘My Tongue or Yours.’ In Nepali Times, 336: 8-9
UNESCO (2002) Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, Cultural Diversity Series
Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNESCO (2003a) Education Today: The Newsletter of UNESCO’s Education Sector,
Number 6 (July-September) 2003
UNESCO (2003b) Sharing a World of Difference: the Earth’s Linguistic, Cultural andBiological Diversity. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization, World Wild Fund for Nature, and Terralingua
Watters, D. (2006) ‘Notes on Kusunda Grammar: A Language Isolate of Nepal.’ In
Himalayan Linguistics Archive, 3: 1-182
Watters, S. (2002) ‘Language Death: a Review and an Examination of a Global Issue in
the Nepalese Context.’ In Gipan, 2: 39-66

40

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:40 Sec2:40

1/4/2008 2:54:56 PM

Webster, J. (1999) ‘The Language Development - Language Promotion Tension: a Case
Study from Limbu.’ In Yadava, Y.P.; Glover, W.W. (eds) Topics in Nepalese Linguistics,
pp 556-565. Kathmandu: Royal Nepal Academy
World Bank and Department for International Development (2006) Unequal Citizens:
Gender, Caste and Ethnic Exclusion in Nepal: Summary. Kathmandu: World Bankand DFID
WWF and Terralingua (2000) Indigenous and Traditional Peoples of the World andEcoregion Conservation: An Integrated Approach to Conserving the World’s
Biological and Cultural Diversity. Gland (Switzerland): World Wide Fund for Nature
Wurm, S.A. (2001) Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger of Disappearing. Paris:
UNESCO Publishing
Yadava, Y.P. (2003) ‘Language.’ In Population Monograph of Nepal, Volume I.
Kathmandu: Central Bureau of Statistics
Yadava, Y.P.; Bajracharya, P.L. (eds) (2006) The Indigenous Languages of Nepal (ILN):
Situation, Policy Planning and Coordination. Kathmandu: National Foundation for
Development of Indigenous Nationalities
Language data sources used for the maps in the CD-ROM (in preparation) on
Linguistic Diversity: An Atlas of Endangered Languages in the Himalayas
Ethnologue: Languages of the WorldAn encyclopaedic reference work cataloguing all of the world’s 6,912 known living
languages, various dates
http://www.ethnologue.org/
UNESCO (2001, 2002) Language Survey Report Nepal. Kathmandu: UNESCOHMGN (2001) Census data. Kathmandu: His Majesty’s Government of Nepal

I CI MO D Tal k i ng Po i nt s 4 / 0 7

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:41 Sec2:41

41

1/4/2008 2:54:56 PM

42

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:42 Sec2:42

1/4/2008 2:54:56 PM

About the authorMark Turin holds a PhD in descriptive linguistics
with a focus on Himalayan languages. He trainedin social anthropology at the University ofCambridge and in linguistics at Leiden University
in the Netherlands through the Himalayan
Languages Project. His doctoral dissertation,
currently in press with Brill, is a grammaticaldescription of Thangmi, a little-known TibetoBurman language spoken in Nepal, with an
ethnolinguistic introduction to the speakers
and their culture. Turin has taught linguistic
and visual anthropology at the University ofCambridge, and held a three-year research
fellowship at Cornell University. He directs Digital
Himalaya, an online project to develop digitalcollection, storage, and distribution strategies for
multimedia anthropological information from theHimalayan region <www.digitalhimalaya.com>.
He has been a visiting scholar at the Namgyal
Institute of Tibetology in Gangtok, Sikkim, where
he initiated the first modern linguistic survey of
Sikkim. He has also worked as a consultant for
the World Bank, ICIMOD, and the United Nations,and continues to research and write about issuesof language, ethnicity, politics, and technology
across the Himalayan region. At present heheads the Translation and Interpretation Unit in
the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) in
Kathmandu.

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:43 Sec2:43

1/4/2008 2:54:56 PM

44

Li ng ui st i c D i ver s ity a n d th e Pre s e r v a tion of E n d a n g e re d L a n g u a g e s

Final_Final_Talking Point 4_MarkSec2:44 Sec2:44

1/4/2008 2:54:57 PM