Panel: Marginalized Languages

Small languages, marginalized languages, minority languages; a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Contrary to what its name seems to suggest, minority languages is a term that covers the large majority of languages in existence. And not only that, it covers languages at very different stages of their existence, such as the three included in the panel on marginalized languages: Icelandic, Basque and Wendat. According to Ástráður Eysteinsson, professor of Comparative Literature and Dean of the School of Humanities at the University of Iceland, an Icelandic minister once famously stated that “there are no small languages”, a sentiment shared by french-born author and literary critic, George Steiner:

“There are no “small” languages however reduced their demographic or environmental setting. Certain languages spoken in the Kalahari Desert feature more and subtler ramifications of the subjunctive than were available to Aristotle. Hopi grammars possess nuances of temporality and motion more consonant with the physics of relativity and undecidability than are our own Indo-European and Angle-Saxon resources.” (My Unwritten Books (2008), p. 64)

It is important then to specify what one means when referring to “small languages”