Linguist races to document Cambodia’s dying S’aoch language

Linguist races to document Cambodia’s dying S’aoch language

Gray’s article on Nikkei Asian Review talks about the attempt of a linguist Jean-Michel Filippi to document the nearly extinct S’aoch language in Southwestern Cambodia and the historical and social challenges faced by the S’aoch ethnic minority that led to this drastic end of the S’aoch language.

One thing that the author mentions as being one of the main causes of the extinction was the intervention of multiple political subjects into the lives of the S’aoch. Tracing back to the Khmer Empire in the 15^th century or the more recent Khmer Rouge, the S’aoch were continuously oppressed and later on also dispersed by the Thai forces in the 19^th century and the Khmer Rouge in the 20^th century. This resulted in the ethnic group’s significant decline in population until now there is only about a hundred of them. The language situation is even worse as only a few S’aoch elders can speak the language while the young only know some words. According to Filippi, it is mainly due to the notion of S’aoch culture being uncivilized and inferior that the young don’t see a reason to revive the language. Moreover, speaking the national language - Khmer also brings them more economic and social benefits.

As we saw in the example of S’aoch language, languages of ethnic minorities in Southeast Asia could be in a great danger of going extinct due to the pressure from the governments on the minorities to adopt national languages. The fact that without knowing Khmer, the chances of the young S’aoch to improve their living conditions are quite slim, this leaves them with no other option than to adopt Khmer and put less emphasis on preserving their language, which is now of no use other than for the study of linguistics. A broader implication of this issue is that in today’s world which is getting more and more connected, we see the trend of non-English-speaking societies putting more and more emphasis on the teaching of English language. The ability to speak English has clearly become an indicator of social mobility and since being global has also slowly become the norm, we can only expect the English language imperialism to spread and bring more and more languages to death.

A question that I had in mind after reading this article was the ethical aspect of preserving languages. Why do we not see a language going extinct the same way as when we see an animal species going extinct?

Source: https://asia.nikkei.com/Life-Arts/Life/Linguist-races-to-document-Cambod…