Why language diversity matters - further ammunition

Lots of languages in the world will fall out of use within the next decades and century. There are between 6 - 9,000 languages in the world, and the language reference catalogue Glottolog (v5.3) estimates that over 4,000 languages are in a threatened or worse status*. 

There are many reasons why this is a bad situation. One aspect that is often mentioned is that when languages disappear, we lose an important facet of what it means to be human. All languages are different from each other, they represent different records of our history and capacity. When one falls out of use, especially when there is no documentation of it, we as humankind loose information about what we are capable of, what it means to be human - how far we can reach, what unites us and what varies. This was for example argued very well by Dr Levinson in a talk I had the pleasure of attending in Berlin last week (poster ⇨) It also forms part of the discussion between Cooperrider and Dr Blasi on a recent episode of the "Many Minds"-podcast (HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!).

At the end of Dr Levinson's talk, he asked for "further ammunition" in the debate regarding the value of maintaining language diversity. I know of two points I think are worth adding:

Language loss leads to negative health consequences, therefore indigenous language centres should be promoted and funded well

When a community loses their heritage language, when cultural continuity is broken, there can be negative effects in well-being and health (Auger 2016, Greenwood & de Leeuw 2012, Durie et al 2009, Oster et al 2014, King et al 2009). Oster et al (2014) for example writes:

Those First Nations that appeared to have more cultural continuity (measured by traditional Indigenous language knowledge) had significantly lower diabetes prevalence after adjustment for socio-economic factors (p =0.007).

Research on the effects of language loss on community health can be difficult to conduct. Languages exist in social landscapes and are often used as a metonym for culture, community identity, historical connections and so on. In addition, colonialism (neo & classical) is a many-headed beast, attacking multiple facets of people's lives at the same time (e.g. income, education opportunities, class mobility, ability to stay on land, legal status of community language). For these reasons, it can be hard to isolate the effects specifically of language loss on community health. The papers cited above try to study this in various ways, for example by controlling for socio-economic factors, but it is tricky from a scientific analysis stand-point. However, I think the complexity of the problem here can make people blind to the simplicity of the solutions. It is highly likely that language centres that promote language maintenance and revitalisation  (e.g. Ngkurr language centre) have positive effects on community health. Now, does it really matter that much if it is an isolated effect of only teaching the next generation the language or if there are also great things happening by distal paths such as serving as community gathering spaces where people can coordinate efforts to problems or share knowledge? It seems a no-brainer to fund language centres at this stage.

King et al (2009) also writes:

Language revitalisation can be seen, therefore, as a health promotion strategy.

Using a language of instruction that isn't the students native language leads to poorer educational outcomes - why switching to English all the time is not good

Language of instruction matters, when people are taught a subject in a language that they don't themselves master (and perhaps the instructor also does not master), problems can arise. Many educational institutions all over the world use English** as a language of instruction earlier and earlier, which can have detrimental effect on the students educational attainment if English is not their native language. This prompts the question: is it really necessary for English to be the language of instruction in so many instances?***

Håkansson and Svensson (2024) argue that Swedish university students do not achieve the same educational excellence in their given subjects when they learn in English. This effect of not reaching subject area excellence is particularly noteworthy because Swedes are very good at English (cf. Gooskens 2024:72). If any non-anglo university students would handle English in undergraduate education well, it should be Swedes. And the truth is that they do handle it okay - Håkansson and Svensson argue that they just don't reach the peaks of excellence that they would in Swedish. Certain levels of educational attainment are being denied them because the language of instruction is English.

Ntshangase (2011) studies a similar pattern in South Africa, with the language of instruction being English and L2-English speakers facing higher failure rates. While Håkansson and Svensson argue that Swedish universities needn't have English as the language of instruction as often as they currently do, Ntshangase instead argues that teachers need to be more aware of L2-English learners situation, simplify the English language components in teaching and address the English jargon of the subject area explicitly.

There is a lot of nuance here, for example: language of instruction matters - but so does the pedagogical competence of the teacher (there are probably bad teachers at Swedish universities teaching in Swedish). Furthermore, many students are multilingual or dominant in a language other than the majority language of the country (Salö 2024). There may also be a difference between students who are taking a programme that leads to a certain profession where the non-English language is dominant (say, social worker in Sweden working primarily with Swedish-speakers) compared to others (international academic). In countries like Sweden, it may also be difficult for the universities to maintain a masters-level programme in certain areas with only Swedish language students, international students may be necessary for the programme to be feasible at all.

Setting all the nuance aside for a moment, it does seem like it is minimally important for educational organisations to evaluate critically the possible negative side-effects of shifting more and more to English as the language of instruction. It is possible that they are shooting themselves in the foot by putting unnecessary obstacles on the road to excellence in education.

Image from Kulu Language Institute's
official Facebook page

I want to end this post with a positive outlook. In Solomon Islands, the Kulu Language Institute has been active for many years and offers training in language analysis in the local languages Luqa and Kubokota. Here is for example a video where teacher Allan Buka goes over Luqa phonology. In addition to deepening their understanding of local language structure, many students also report further success in the official educational system (which is in English). This enterprise shows that the language of instruction can be a smaller indigenous language, education in abstract thinking needn't be restricted to large languages like English. All languages are valid languages of instruction. I end with a passage from a recent paper (Zobule & McDougall 2026) on the Kulu Language Institute:

McDougall would describe classes at both the Kulu Language Institute and Islands Bible Ministries as unapologetically
academic; they focus on critical analysis and abstract thinking about language. This approach runs counter to dominant approaches to mass education in Solomon Islands, which have consistently underestimated the ambitions of ordinary people. From the late colonial and early Independence era, planners have assumed that only a small elite would progress through academically-oriented education and that most rural people would be best served by a more practical curriculum focused on basic skills and vocational education. [...] 
The Kulu Language Institute is grounded in Zobule’s conviction that rural people are perfectly capable of high-level intellectual work. By practicing these skills in a language they know, even the least educated Ranoqans discover that they aren’t stupid ‘stoneheads.’ Like the African American students that Jordan worked with, they come to see failures in the broader system, rather than themselves. Studying the form and function of Luqa provides Ranoqans a bridge to other languages, especially English, while also affirming the value of their own language, knowledge, experience, and lifeways.

Footnotes
* To read more about how Glottolog construes its endangerment status, please see Hammarström et al (2018).

** Most of the discussion has been in regards to English, but feel free to substitute in another large language like Spanish, Thai, Hindi etc which may be used as a language of instruction with students who have other native languages.

*** The irony of this blogpost being in English is not lost on me. I am considering minimally creating a version in Swedish.

References

• Gooskens, C. (2024). Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages (Vol. 30). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. https://library.oapen.org/viewer/web/viewer.html
• Hammarström, H., Castermans, T., Forkel, R., Verbeek, K., Westenberg, M. A., & Speckmann, B. (2018). Simultaneous visualization of language endangerment and language description. 
• Auger, M. D. Cultural Continuity as a Determinant of Indigenous Peoples’ Health: A Metasynthesis of Qualitative Research in Canada and the United States. Int. Indig. Policy J. 7, 3 (2016).
• Salö, L. (2024). På engelska förstår jag ungefär. Högre utbildning, 14(3), 1-5. https://hogreutbildning.se/index.php/hu/article/view/6761/10502 
• Ntshangase, N. D. (2011). The negative impact of learning in English on the cognitive development of second language learners of English (Masters thesis, University of Zululand)
• King, M., Smith, A., & Gracey, M. (2009). Indigenous health part 2: the underlying causes of the health gap. The lancet, 374(9683), 76-85.
• McIvor, O., Napoleon, A., & Dickie, K. M. (2009). Language and culture as protective factors for at-risk communities. https://doi.org/10.18357/ijih51200912327 
• Greenwood, M. L., & de Leeuw, S. N. (2012). Social determinants of health and the future well-being of Aboriginal children in Canada. Paediatrics & child health, 17(7), 381-384.
• Durie, M., H. Milroy, E. Hunter (2009) "Mental Health and the Indigenous Peoples of Australia and New Zealand" in Healing Traditions: The Mental Health of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, L. J. Kirmayer, G. G. Valaskakis, Eds. (UBC Press, Vancouver, 2009), pp. 36–55.
• Oster, R. T., Grier, A., Lightning, R., Mayan, M. J., & Toth, E. L. (2014). Cultural continuity, traditional Indigenous language, and diabetes in Alberta First Nations: a mixed methods study. International journal for equity in health, 13, 1-11.
• Zobule, Alpheaus G., Debra McDougall. 2026. Grammar as a bridge: Empowering Indigenous learners in a Solomon Islands language school. Language Documentation & Conservation 20: 52-67.
• Håkansson, O., & Svensson, P. (2024). På engelska förstår jag ungefär: om anglifieringen av svensk högre utbildning. Morfem