By Lee Hyo-sik
The dialect widely spoken on Korea’s southern resort island of Jeju has been named as a critically endangered language by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), providing fresh momentum to the island’s efforts to preserve the fading Jeju language.
The Jeju Special Self-Governing Province said Monday that an agency of the United Nations charged with administering international education, science and the arts programs among member states, designated the Jeju dialect in December as a language facing immediate threat of extinction, along with India’s Koro language.
There are known to be about 6,700 different languages across the globe. Of the 6,700, around 2,473 languages are projected to disappear in the near future, due to the dwindling number of language users, according to UNESCO.
The U.N. agency established a linguistic research center in 1995 to collect information on languages spoken around the world. Since then, it has raised funds to finance a range of projects to preserve the ones that are spoken by only a small number of people. They are classified into five groups in accordance with the degree of vulnerability.
``UNESCO officials came here to collect documents and other material concerning the Jeju language in March last year. The officials consulted with linguists at home and abroad about whether the island’s dialect is worth protecting, for the following several months, and decided to designate it as one of the world’s endangered languages,’’ said Oh Seung-cheol, director of culture & art division at the Jeju Special Self-Governing Province.
He said the UNESCO designation has raised public awareness of the importance of the dialect as part of the nation’s cultural heritage.
``It means that the world has recognized the value of our unique language spoken on the island for thousands of years. Korea is obligated to do everything it can to keep the dialect from disappearing and teach more people to use it.’’
The Jeju provincial government will launch a 15-member ad-hoc committee in February, which will draw up a blueprint for the preservation of the Jeju language, Oh said.
``We will also consider establishing a linguistic research center in cooperation with academic institutions here. The provincial government plans to organize an array of events, such as Jeju language speech contests, to promote its usage, while encouraging schools here to teach students the language as part of their regular curriculum,’’ he said.