Language: A Resource for Nature 143Indonesia, New Guinea, the Philippines); (3) Tropical climates, fostering higher
numbers and densities of species (e.g. Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the
Congo). All these factors are thought to increase linguistic diversity by increasing
mutual isolation between human populations and thus favouring linguistic diver-
sification.
In addition, an ecological phenomenon has also been proposed as possibly
accounting for biodiversity-linguistic diversity correlations: a process of coevolu-
tion of small-scale human groups with their local ecosystems, in which over time
humans interacted closely with the environment, modifying it as they adapted to
it, and acquiring intimate knowledge of it. This knowledge was encoded and trans-
mitted through the local languages, which thus became in turn moulded by and
specifically adapted to their socio-ecological environments. As one linguist puts it:
‘Life in a particular human environment is dependent on people’s ability to talk
about it.’^9
This may sound like a truism worthy of little note, but it is not so. That
remark embodies one of the most basic functions that language performs for
humans, and in its deceptive simplicity reveals where the ‘inextricable link’ between
language and the environment is to be found. At the local level, linguistic and
cultural distinctiveness has often developed even among human groups defined as
belonging to the same cultural area or whose languages are considered to be his-
torically related, and who live within the same bioregion. As local groups have
adapted to life in specific ecological niches, they have developed specialized knowl-
edge of them, and specialized ways of talking about them, to convey this vital
knowledge and ways of acting upon it for individual and group survival. What has
Table 5.1 Megadiversity countries: concurrence with endemic languages- Australia (5)
- (8)Brazil
- (17)China
- (23)Colombia
- (9)Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Ecuador (–)
- (4)India
- (2)Indonesia
- Madagascar (–)
- (15)Malaysia
- (6)Mexico
- (18)Peru
Concurrence: 10 of 12 (83%)
Countries in top 25 for endemic languages in bold. Country listed alphabetically (endemic
language rank in parentheses).
Source: Modified from Harmon (in press). ‘Megadiversity countries’ have been identified as
those likely to contain a large percentage of global species richness. The 12 listed were
identified on the basis of species lists for vertebrates, swallowtail butterflies and higher plants