Indigenous Languages: From British Columbia to the Internet.

 

The media has been recently highlighting different topics related to Indigenous people in Canada. Right now, you can see in the International News how they cover the subject of the Residential schools, one of the darkest pages of our history. However, not all the news are sad. If we talk about languages, there are 2 good news recently reported: First: there is an increased interest in learning how to speak an indigenous language as an L2, and second: the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in its News site has announced last month the launch of a new interactive map by the First Peoples’ Cultural Council, providing information about Indigenous languages in British Columbia (BC).

The interactive map can be found here : https://maps.fpcc.ca/languages . It was created by Indigenous people and it has a list of their languages in BC with links to information about the different names by which each language is known, their pronunciation, vocabulary, territory where the language is/was spoken,

There is information about 34 languages grouped in 7 language families (2 of the languages currently report no speakers). It is interesting to highlight that approx 50% of the first nations’ languages of Canada are spoken in BC, but most of them have very few fluent speakers. The 3 languages with most speakers are Gitxsan (523 Fluent speakers + 639 L2 speakers = 1162 regular speakers), Chilcotin (765 fl + 393 L2 = 1158) and Shuswap (187 fl + 693 L2 = 880). But this map has also a registry of how many people are currently learning any of those languages. We can find that a language like Carrier has 1856 students who could increase the number of speakers up to 2680, and Halkomelem has 1238, that could increase the number of speakers to 2098. You can find more information about those same language families and languages in Omniglot.

I compared the numbers shown in this map with the number of speakers provided by Statistic Canada from the last census 2016 and I found that this map has more detailed information about the current numbers and status of each language.

BC has a special situation with Indigenous languages. There are more than 60 indigenous languages spoken in Canada and half of them are from BC. 30 of the languages listed in this site have less than 1000 speakers. If we talk about the 10 most spoken indigenous languages of Canada, only Dene language has presence in BC (although most of its speakers are from the province of Saskatchewan). 

British Columbia has a rich linguistic heritage that most be preserved for future generations. Much can be done in order to support this work. Universities, NGO’s and private companies have provided support to this work. But Canada has some successful experiences that can be replicated. For example, in Nunavut, you can have access to all kind of services with the local authorities, including to apply for a Driver’s License in Inuktitut or in Inuinnaqtun.  

More innovations dedicated to indigenous languages revitalization are yet to come.

Note : The same day I finished writing this article, it was announced that the Inuk leader, Mary Simon, was appointed as governor general of Canada. She is the first Indigenous person to be appointed to this role. She is bilingual in English and Inuktitut. Good news for Indigenous people in Canada.