According to UNESCO, at least ten languages disappear in the world every year, and of the 6,000 currently spoken, about half are under threat. The UN agency says that linguists consider a language in danger if less than 100,000 people speak it, and over 3,000 languages across the planet are currently spoken by fewer than 10,000 people.

It is sometimes forgotten that while Guyana has only one official language, it is actually home to ten languages in all - not dialects as is sometimes claimed, but actual languages. In addition to English, there is Carib, Patamona, Akawaio, Macushi, Wai Wai, Arecuna, Wapishana, Arawak and Warrau.

The first six of these belong to the Carib family of languages; Wapishana is related to Arawak, although not mutually intelligible with it; while Warrau, thought to be an ancient language, has no known relatives in this country, and may not have relatives anywhere in this hemisphere - although that is not certain as yet.

There have been other indigenous languages spoken here in the past, which - like Taruma - have disappeared along with the people who spoke them. In addition, there were two Creoles, unique to this country, one of which has been extinct for a very long time, and the other of which might become so in the very near future. These are Skepi Dutch, once spoken in Essequibo, and Berbice Dutch, which up until a decade or so ago, still had one or two speakers. According to linguists what was interesting about Berbice Dutch was its unusually high lexical input from a single African language - Ijo from the Niger Delta - suggesting that the earliest Africans in Berbice may have originated largely from a single tribe.

In the nineteenth century Guyana was host to an array of languages, particularly from the Indian sub-continent, all of which were extinguished as a consequence of the colonial setting and the education system. We must regard it as our good fortune that we still have nine minority languages, but those who speak those languages should not take their survival for granted. The key thing for helping a language to survive is to ensure that it is the medium of instruction in the first years of primary school.

According to UNESCO’s Assistant Director for Education John Daniel, research has shown that “children who begin their education in their mother tongue make a better start, and continue to perform better than those for whom school starts with a new language.” In other words, teaching a child in its own language at the outset of his/her school career makes educational as well as cultural sense.

It must be acknowledged, however, that this is something which is already known in this country. A project has been under way in Wapishana-speaking areas for some time doing just that, and its success is prompting an extension to Macushi-speaking areas. The Wapishanas and the Macushis live in Region 9, and it should be said that the languages of the interior regions are under less immediate threat than those of the coast, such as Arawak, which is spoken by the most numerous of the indigenous nations represented here. The influence of coastal ways, and the constant interaction with English-speakers, has meant that many of the younger generation of Arawaks simply cannot speak their ancestral tongue any longer. It is particularly unfortunate, because Arawak has existed in written form for a very long time, and until recently, had proved itself remarkably resilient considering the centuries of interaction between Arawaks and Europeans. It had also proved itself quite versatile, responding to alien concepts by the creation of new words.

It is in the interest of all of us, and not just the indigenous peoples, to preserve the unique linguistic heritage of this land. For the Amerindians, of course, it is even more important, since language is so closely associated with identity, and so much of a people’s world view is bound up with it. One could only wish that the Ministry of Education would consider holding a conference on Amerindian education, to which would be invited the various stakeholders and especially representatives of our different nations to consider the question of language, and look at the needs of the different indigenous communities where education is concerned.