Most linguists put
the number of languages spoken in Africa at about two thousand. Some
researchers consider about 300 of those endangered because they are spoken by
fewer than 10-thousand people. A few are
on the verge of extinction, and researchers are rushing to document them.
VOA's
Bart Childs recently accompanied a small group of researchers who went
to Sierra Leone to document two languages on the verge of disappearing:
Kim and Bom.
The team included research assistant Hanah Sarvasy, Ali Turay from University of Njala, master
facilitator Curtis Peku and, in the lead, professor Tucker Childs of Portland
State University. Tucker is Bart Child's brother.
Getting
to their destination in western Sierra Leone took quite a bit of
planning and perseverance. From the capital, Freetown, they drove to
the market town
of Bunapea, where they boarded a riverboat for a six hour trip to
the village of Tei. Childs said transportation is difficult in the West
African country, where most people walk or use dugout canoes to cross
Sierra Leone's many waterways. For he and the research team, it meant
paddling through the grassy flood plain of the Waanje River in the
project's red fiberglass canoe.
Childs
carried with him a bag containing a computer, camera and other
technical equipment in a case he dubbed 'fat boy.' Porters were hired
to carry it and the team's other baggage.
They finally arrived at
the village of Nyandehun, where about 20 people still speak Kim. Childs
said the surviving speakers are very old, live in remote villages and
only travel locally.
One was 91-year-old Pa Seku Abdullai. He told the team, "My grandfather,
my grandmother, my mother, my father -- they weren't speaking Mende, only
Kim." Other speakers included Fasia Kolia, Jilo Musa and Baige Fandewo.
They
spoke with the team about their culture, including drumming. Fandewo
said it used to be a good way to earn money, especially after someone
died when it was customary to drum for three or four days of mourning.
