Fading Voices
2024 - ongoing
“In language rests life. In language rests death”
Spoken languages are remarkable repositories of people’s identity, culture and uniqueness.
Globally, their distribution is profoundly uneven, with 80% of the world’s population speaking about 75 languages, while over 6500 languages are spoken by the remaining 20%. Many of these minority languages are critically endangered and an estimated 60% to 90% risk disappearing within the next 100 years.
When a language dies, humanity loses precious knowledge and voices full of richness and variety, much like the disappearence of biodiversity from natural ecosystems, when the world loses vital life forms who will forever cease to exist. While there are controversies in the linguistic field about whether languages should be allowed to fade or be actively preserved, I believe it is essential to document them while some speakers, in most cases the oldest members within communities, are still alive and fluent in their vernaculars.
In Italy, twelve linguistic minorities are officially recognized, and many of of them, such as Cimbrian, Occitaine, Arbëreshë and Grecanic face a serious risk of extinction. Most of them originated from foreign communities who settled in Italy to escape invasions, gradually developing their linguistic identity by mixing with the local idiom.
This project aims to reach out to communities who speak minority languages across the country and depict, through environmental portraits and reportage, the last speakers and their traditional customs and practices, along all generations.
Additionally, the creation of video and audio recordings to capture the sounds of speech, from traditional sayings, poems or songs will provide an invaluable archive of intangible cultural heritage, now disapparing at an alarming rate to the knowledge of few.
Words shape meanings and unite communities through shared identities and goals. They cannot survive unless people continue speaking them. Raise awareness today may allow us to prevent more lost words from being confined to history books, never to be heard again.
