SYDNEY – The University of Sydney has hosted a public forum looking at preserving indigenous languages, many of them endangered, in the Pacific region.

With some predictions estimating as many as half of the world’s languages may no longer exist by the end of the century, the forum – entitled, Competing Voices: The Status of Indigenous Languages in the French Pacific and Australia – was triggered by concern from communities within Australia and the Pacific.

The Pacific is home to one third of all living languages.

Australia has 250 indigenous languages of which only 13 are now spoken.

The University’s Director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research, Jakelin Troy, said: “The reason they wanted to have this dialogue is that there are many, many languages spoken throughout the Pacific and Australia, many hundreds.

“You could stick your head in the sand and pretend that wasn’t the case but if you want to do business for example across the Pacific, it’s important to know the languages, just as it is to do business elsewhere in the world.

“Also it’s about people’s identities and their well-being.

“It’s demonstrated that where people have their language supported and they’re able to be educated in their languages and to speak their languages on a daily basis, it’s interesting that even chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease are reduced.

“There’s evidence in Australia where Aboriginal communities still speak languages, those chronic diseases are reduced.

“Also youth suicide is heavily impacted upon by maintenance and revival of languages in communities – so it’s quite serious the matter of keeping these languages going.”

In an earlier interview with the ABC Troy said: “Many philosophers and human rights advocates, and indeed the United Nations – where there are treaties about the rights to use your own language – the thinking is that when you lose a human language, then you lose all the knowledge, the history and the culture and even the identities of the people who spoke that language.

“You lose the knowledge of the environment, the seasons, the knowledge of animals, plants – everything to do with the group of people who speak the language is diminished.

She says one of the main barriers to a minority language surviving is education, where people are educated in another language secondary to their own.

“All across the Pacific, in this case the French Pacific which is the focus for this symposium, English and French have become the dominating languages in which people use for everyday communication – the littler languages of the communities start to lose their status, particularly in the minds of young people. They become just artefacts of their own communities.

“That’s why it’s important that children being raised in those communities be given the chance to learn in those languages. It’s mportant that education systems across the Pacific start considering ways to support our languages in schools.

“Accepting the fact that humans can be multilingual instead of privileging English.”

In an interview with Radio New Zealand the presenter spoke of the Rotuman community in Fiji where the language of that community was on the UN endangered list.

He said a community leader said was worried about losing the culture.

“What he was fighting with was that young Rotumans were being taught English because that was a gateway to a job and Rotuman, the language, wasn’t seen as such.”

He asked Troy how do you combat that sort of thing when it comes to living and economics?

“Well, if you want to do business with Rotumans who speak Rotuman it should be in Rotuman.

“The reason English is on the rise is because people are forcing other people to speak English. The English-speaking world is forcing itself onto the world of other people’s languages as it has in Australia.

“My people, Aboriginal people in Australia, Torres Strait Islander people as well, were beaten for speaking languages until very recently. It’s only just now that our education system is embracing that we should be teaching these languages.

“It’s not that actually English is naturally the dominant language, it’s being made the dominant language by people who are pushing it.

Radio New Zealand asked what policies could be implemented to aid the preservation of languages.

“Well, at the most central level, recognise the 250 languages of Australia and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as national languages alongside English.

“Across the Pacific it would be useful to see local languages recognised as national languages. In New Zealand, Maori is used alongside English as a national language. All their legislation is in Maori and in English.

“People will says, ‘but Australia has 250 languages, how an you do that’ – well,its not that difficult. The languages are all specific to particular locations, so in the very least we should start using those languages in the locations where they are spoken.

“Develop programmes so that if government for example is delivering a programme to a group of people in Australia, Aboriginal people or Torres Strait Island people, make sure that those programmes are delivered in their language.

“From a policy point of view, if you want to get information across to people it makes sense to speak to them in their own language.”