The Language-Ecology Connection (RePublished)

(linguistic diversity 🤝 building a sustainable future)

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You may have heard the case for linguistic diversity being made from a few different angles: from moral, to political, to ethical. But have you heard about the ecological argument?

For researchers in the subfield of ecolinguistics, the connection between language and ecology is incredibly special.

The main idea is this: While language can act as a medium for cultural knowledge to be shared, sometimes this specific knowledge is embedded within the language itself.

So when a language disappears, the centuries-old discoveries and ideas carried on by speakers of the language disappear as well. This includes rich and specific knowledge about the natural world, much of which remains unknown to modern biologists.

Here are three intriguing examples of the beautiful language-ecology connection.

Salmon Should’ve Told Them

In 2001, Nordic biologists announced an exciting new discovery about salmon spawning patterns: that salmon are able to spawn in very small rivulets (or streams), a feat previously thought to be impossible.

But according to Pekka Aikio, the president of the Sámi Parliament in Finland, this discovery was really not that novel.

According to Aikio, this knowledge was old news for the indigenous Sámi peoples. In fact, the Sámi names for many of the rivulets that were studied contain the very word for “salmon spawning ground”!¹

go, salmon, go!

An Ef-fish-ient Method

If you ever find yourself looking for spangled grunter in Arnhem Land in Australia’s Northern Territory, stop staring at the water — look to the trees!

While in English, the native white apple tree and the spangled grunter have no linguistic connection, both are called the bokorn in an Australian Aboriginal language called Kunwinjku.

This link points to an interesting fact about the spangled grunter: they love to feed on the white apples that fall from the trees into the water.

For any Kunwinjku speaker in search of spangled grunter, the connection is clear: to get to the bokorn, look for the bokorn!²

bokorn + bokorn

Seri-ously Interesting

During documentation efforts for the Seri language, spoken by around 500 people in Baja California in Mexico, linguists learned about local practices for harvesting marine eelgrass from the ocean.

The Seri’s use of eelgrass is the only case of a grain being harvested from the ocean as a human food source, and the Seri language contained a treasure trove of knowledge regarding its cultivation.

Xnois iháat iizax (“moon of the eelgrass harvest”), for example, is the name for the month of April. The black brant bird, or the xnois cacáaso (“the foreteller of eelgrass seed”), is named for its habit of diving into the ocean to feed on eelgrass.³

Eelgrass is notable for its great potential as a general food source, as it does not require fresh water, pesticides, or artificial fertilizer, and offers high nutritional value for those who eat it.

this eelgrass yields xnois, the name for its seeds

Why does it all matter?

As we examine the links between language, knowledge, and ecology, we can find another convincing argument for the preservation of endangered languages.

Because endangered languages not only express a specific way of knowing and living, but also provide us with specialized, localized knowledge about our world, passed on by speakers over thousands of years.

This offers us a wealth of perspectives from which we can make sense of the planet we live on, especially as we work towards creating a more sustainable future.

What’s more, biologists’ predictions for extinction rates of species around the world are pretty discouraging. Some scientists estimate that tens of thousands of species go extinct annually, but it’s hard to say — tens of millions of species worldwide have still gone unnamed.⁴

Interestingly, areas of the world with high biodiversity also tend to be areas that contain high linguistic diversity. (Take Papua New Guinea, for example, which boasts over 800 living languages.)

So for any biologists lurking on this newsletter, consider a linguist for an unlikely but mutually beneficial partnership!

Thanks for Reading!

This article is a revamp of one of my first newsletters ever. It bummed me out that one of my most interesting topics was buried in the archives, so I’m thrilled to reintroduce it for all of you! (I probably had ten subscribers at the time and they were all friends and family.)

If you read this far and haven’t subscribed yet, why not do so now? I send out newsletters twice a month about language and our rich linguistic world.

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1. Skutnabb-Kangas, T., Maffi, L. & Harmon, D. (2003). Sharing a World of Difference: The Earth’s Linguistic, Cultural and Biological Diversity. Paris: UNESCO/WWF/Terralingua.

2. Evans, N. (2010). Dying Words: Endangered Languages and What They Have To Tell Us (pp. 22). Wiley-Blackwell.

3. Evans, N. (2010). Dying Words: Endangered Languages and What They Have To Tell Us (pp. 20). Wiley-Blackwell.

4. Nettle, D. & Romaine, S. Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World’s Languages (pp. 41). Oxford University Press.