Beyond Time - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

2.1.2.2 Totela’s endangerment pattern
What is interesting about the African situation is that – in contrast with areas
such as Australia, Americas and Siberia, where European languages have replaced,
or are replacing, aboriginal languages – it is, for the most part, the more
prestigious African languages. That is, African languages are wiping out African
languages (Tsunoda 2004:26).
The above quote describes very well the situation of Totela in Zambia, where Lozi, the
areal lingua franca and language of education, is rapidly replacing Totela. The endangeredlanguage
literature contains myriad scales for measuring degree of endangerment. Most are
based on one or more of the following (interdependent) criteria, as given in Tsunoda (2004:9):
1. Number of (fluent, mother-tongue, first-language) speakers
2. Speaker age
3. Intergenerational language transmission
4. Range of functions of the language within society
While the number of fluent speakers for Totela is unknown, personal observation along
with the census data discussed in 2.1.2.1 indicate that their number is in decline. Most
speakers of Totela in Zambia are from older generations. In very rural areas where Totela is
spoken, most people in the current childbearing generation (about age 20-40) have at least
a passive knowledge of Totela, and many are able to speak it, as well. However, they rarely
do so in their day-to-day lives, and almost never speak Totela with their children. While
a few children I met had learned Totela from their grandparents (or older parents), most
understood only a few words. This speaks to criterion 3, intergenerational transmission,
which appears to have come to a halt in the Totela communities I have visited. As for the
fourth criterion, Totela is currently spoken, if at all, only in home situations. It is rarely
written (although the Lozi writing system is easily transferrable to Totela) and it is not used
as a medium of instruction or for official purposes. Even many fluent speakers rarely use
Totela at all, since younger generations do not speak or understand it. In a vicious cycle,
older speakers use Totela less as it is less understood by younger speakers, who in turn have
even less exposure to the language.
One informative endangerment scale is that of Krauss (2007), outlined in (18). 9
(18) Krauss’ endangerment scale (Krauss 2007)
1. “Safe languages”, still learned as a mother tongue by children and predicted to
continue to be learned as such for the foreseeable future.
9 As with many smaller languages, all but the highest degrees of endangerment severity on the famous
Fishman “Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale” (Fishman 1991) are irrelevant for Totela, as the lower
degrees place emphasis on official and literary/educational uses that cannot practically be attained for small
languages in highly multilingual countries – Zambia, with a population of about 12,000,000, has up to 72
languages (see also Hinton 2003:49-53)
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