ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 2, 1996 TAG: 9606030151
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: UKARUMPA, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
SOURCE: CHARLES J. HANLEY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Go ahead, try to ``make my day'' in Budibud. Or ``surf the Net'' in Bukiyip. Or ``do a deal'' in a dialect of Bo. Linguistically speaking, you aren't going to get there from here.
New Guinea's 1,300 languages come up short in the trite and trendy. But they make up for it with the treasures of timeless tongues: a wealth of words for nature's works, for myths and age-old rites and magic, and a complexity rich enough to turn a linguist's inquiry into a lifetime endeavor.
There's just one problem: The timeless tongues are running out of time.
``To some extent, almost every language in the country is endangered,'' said Bill Staley, a linguist in Ukarumpa, a missionary outpost in Papua New Guinea's lush Central Highlands.
In fact, languages around the world may share the same fate.
Scholars believe 90 percent of human languages may disappear by the mid-21st century, pushed to oblivion's edge by the spread of English and other ``world'' languages via media, trade and migration and by the pressure of dominant vernaculars in their own homelands.
A thin, underfinanced line of linguists around the world is trying to hold back the tide and save - or at least document - many of these ``small tongues.''
In America, more than 150 native languages are declining. In India, 149 are endangered. Extinction looms even in Europe: Only 200 Cornish speakers remain in England, for example.
The challenges are everywhere. But just as archaeologists flock to Egypt and art lovers to Rome, linguists gravitate to this corner of the western Pacific, where one-fifth of the world's 6,000 languages, from Abaga to Zimakani, are spoken on a rugged tropical island the size of Texas.
Terrain explains New Guinea's linguistic diversity.
The islanders - now 4 million - developed in isolated units hemmed in by mountains, sea and rivers, and by the enmity of the tribe over the hill.
``You'll find people living on hills in grassy swamp areas, and each hill has a different language, maybe 200 people each,'' said linguist Daryl Pfantz.
Staley and Pfantz are with the Summer Institute of Linguistics, a U.S.-based, nondenominational Christian organization that translates the Bible into the world's minor tongues.
The translator-missionaries, usually husband-wife teams, typically spend 15 to 20 years in a remote village, learning the language, developing an alphabet, translating the New Testament and, if time permits, the Old. Often they learn native speech with the help of villagers who speak the English hybrid Pidgin, Papua New Guinea's unofficial vernacular.
Institute teams are working on 185 New Guinea languages and have completed translations for 94. And they have shed new light along the way on the human gift of tongues.
In New Guinea you can find, for example, the language with the world's fewest basic units of sound - Rotokas, with just 13 - as well as the one with the most - Yele, with 96 ``phonemes.''
One language has a vocabulary of a mere few hundred words - apparently a tribe with an especially simple life. Another has 68 ways to pluralize nouns. One count finds 117 languages with fewer than 100 speakers. And the languages can be as different as Spanish is from Japanese. In fact, seven are ``isolates'' - with no relationship to any known tongue in the world.
The curiosities are boundless: One group has named each bird by mimicking its sound, and calls dogs ``rrrufff.''
With no word for ``pilot,'' people speaking Olo - Staley's specialty - settled on ``man who holds the nose'' of the helicopter. And oddities relate not just to modern concepts: Olo has no distinctive word for ``walk,'' instead taking ``ile,'' meaning ``stand,'' and doubling it to ``ilele,'' meaning ``stand'' here, ``stand'' there - in other words, walking.
But if the gaps are striking - no language here is believed to have a ``thank you'' or ``hello'' - the riches are even more so.
In Olo, Staley has identified 40 metaphors using ``heart'' for the range of emotions, from ``good heart'' for thankful to ``crusty heart'' for stubborn.
``If you have 36 names for banana and 36 for sago palm, English looks pretty impoverished to cover the things important to these people,'' he said.
For scholars, documenting grammars and vocabularies helps build universal linguistic theory. But actually saving languages would do more.
``Western culture tends toward `Everybody does it this way','' Pfantz said. ``But to wipe out this diversity of humankind and make us all clones of each other, well ... .''
New Guineans themselves feel even more strongly about their ``home'' tongues, squeezed by English, the official language, on one side and Pidgin on the other.
``You're looking at distinct communities with our own way of life,'' said Otto Nekitel, a languages professor at the national university. ``It saddens me. ... The diversity makes us what we are.''
To bolster tribal tongues, the government is urging localities to use their languages - not English - in the first three grades of school.
Internationally, UNESCO's 2-year-old Endangered Languages Project makes small grants to linguists to document dying tongues. And the University of Tokyo has just established an Internet database to compile basics about individual languages and, eventually, vocabularies, audio texts and other resources.
But it's an uphill struggle against a landslide of homogenization, a trend typified by the first Papua New Guinea entry in UNESCO's ``Red Book on Endangered Languages.''
It lists ``Aribwatsa,'' and then notes, ``One very old woman left.''
``When the last person dies off,'' laments Pfantz, ``it's like burning a library building.''
`The big one, he has only one son'
Sample of Papua New Guinea's Olo language - translation of Gospel passage John 3:16:
Olo
Ma Ili, le ninge nelyeyetei lele, wolo le onom puwotei liripe mete yeflipiye piti tef le le so watepe ninge nelyeyetei lele lepe. Ma Ili lolpepe soma wem mete yeflipi wuso pulpowo lepe, pe yeflipiye miso pa pelengi kolo olo, wolo pe miso kali nempi liti pratei pingi wem wem.
Literal English translation
The Big One, he has only one Son of his very own, but his heart remains very much upon all men of the ground, and he thus gave them his one only true Son. The Big One did this, so that all men who believe in him, they all will surely not die completely, no, but they will be able to receive life-breath to remain alive following time and time.
New international version
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
LENGTH: Long : 125 linesby CNB