The Welsh language could have a successful century Philip Wolmuth/Alamy
The Welsh language could be set to thrive over the long-term, according to projections of whether endangered languages will flourish or fail. New Zealand鈥檚 native language on the other hand is projected to become extinct.
More than half of the world鈥檚 estimated 7000 languages are expected to go extinct by 2100. But the Welsh language, spoken by about half a million people today, is expected to 鈥渢hrive in the long term鈥, based on a model looking at how proficiency in languages changes over time.
By contrast, te reo Ma虅ori, the language of the indigenous Maori in New Zealand, which nearly 4 per cent of the country can speak, was found to be 鈥渙n a path towards extinction at current learning rates鈥.
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The projections come from a team across three New Zealand universities, who built a model that splits populations up by looking at whether they fall into one of three levels of proficiency in a language, and how fast people learn. The model was first trained on census data in Wales and surveys of Welsh language use since 1991, and then run on te reo Ma虅ori using New Zealand census data.
The researchers say the results suggest that the New Zealand government will miss its target of a million te reo Ma虅ori speakers by 2040, 鈥渨ithout a major increase in learning rates to levels above those achieved in Wales”. They suggest policies targeting learning in schools, with teachers focusing on the country鈥檚 Maori before widening out to the rest of the population, to avoid them being spread too thinly.
However, some say the results should be treated with caution. Hywel Jones at Cardiff University, UK, notes that the model is built on relatively little data. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e putting a model on a tiny data set. As far as usefulness for language planners, I don鈥檛 buy it.鈥
The research also doesn鈥檛 take into account the prospect of speakers losing their proficiency in a language, says Jones, which he thinks is unreasonable. 鈥淭here is language attrition,鈥 he says. A former statistician at Welsh Language Board, Jones raised doubts about the feasibility of the Wales government鈥檚 target of one million Welsh speakers by 2050 when the goal was being set. Keeping Welsh speakers at today鈥檚 levels would be more realistic and count as success, he says.
Journal of the Royal Society Interface
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