Death of Bo language

承前*1

BBCの記事；

Page last updated at 07:57 GMT, Friday, 5 February 2010
Last speaker of Bo language dies

The last speaker of an ancient language in India's Andaman Islands has died at the age of 85. Boa Sr lived in the Bo tribe which is believed to be descended from the oldest human culture on Earth.

Dr Nicholas Ostler, a linguist and chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, explains the historical significance of the language.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8499000/8499752.stm

また、

Boa Sr. known as chaachii died on 26th January at 11.30pm in the Port Blair hospital . She was the last speaker of Bo language. It pains to see how one by one we are losing speakers of Great Andamanese and language is getting extinct. A very fast erosion of indigenous knowledge base, that we all are helplessly witnessing. She was the only member who remembered the old songs. Most of the songs on my website are sung by her.
http://www.andamanese.net/BoaSr_Obituary.html

Bo語の最後の話者の死に触れた論説として、

David Shariatmadari “The death of a language” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/05/bo-language-extinct-linguistics

曰く、

Endangered languages aren't the same as endangered species. Their greatest value isn't scientific, but cultural. For me, the most poignant aspect of Boa Sr's story was the loneliness she felt for the last 30 years, having no one to share tales, to pun or joke with in her mother tongue. The death of a language is the most obvious symptom of an acute human crisis: the loss of a store of wisdom, and a sense of community. We should work, wherever we can, to prevent it.

ところで、BBCの記事にある”an ancient language”という言い方は誤解を招きやすい。或いは、間違っていると言っていいかも知れない。Shariatmadari氏は

Languages are not like stone tablets – they change from one generation to the next until there has been a complete turnover of sounds and structures within a few millennia. There is no sense in which the Bo of Boa Sr is anything like the language spoken by her ancestors 65,000 years ago.

という。
或る言語の最後の話者というと、シオドーラ・クローバーの『イシ』。「イシ」はカリフォルニアの「ヤヒ族」の最後の生き残りで、当然ながら「ヤヒ」語の最後の話者。シオドーラ・クローバーは作家、ル・グイン*2の母親で、ル・グインはこの本に序文を寄せている。昔読んだ青木保『沈黙の文化を訪ねて』に収録されていた、〈文化の死〉を巡るエッセイは数十年を経た今でも何故だか印象が強い。文字も目立った物質文化も持たない、すべてがその担い手の身体の中に保存されている文化は、滅びるとき、謂わば屍体も残さずに、忽然と世界から消えていくだろうと。

イシ―北米最後の野生インディアン (同時代ライブラリー)

沈黙の文化を訪ねて (中公文庫 M 85-2)

因みに、Shariatmadari氏は上のテクストで、「サピア−ウォーフ仮説」（Cf. 『言語・思考・現実』）を批判している。しかし、このコンビのうちのサピアが極端な言語決定論に傾いたのは晩年のことで、1921年の『言語』（特に第10章「言語と人種と文化」）では「言語の境界」と「文化の境界」が一致しないことが強調されている。

言語・思考・現実 (講談社学術文庫)

言語―ことばの研究序説 (岩波文庫)

*1:http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20090221/1235205500

*2:See also http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20091228/1261979489