Are Germans an endangered species? This provocative question was the lead of a recent Reuters article about Germany's shrinking population. Between 2003 and 2005, the number of people in Germany fell by 82,000, according to Germany's Federal Statistical Office.
Germany has gone over the hill. Birthrates have fallen below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman needed to sustain a stable population.
"Germans are at risk of dying out if the trend continues," the article quotes Harald Michel, managing director of the Institute for Applied Demography, as saying.
It's rather extreme to predict a world devoid of Germans-and their tasty pretzels, boisterous Oktoberfests and cute umlauts. But I can relate to the uneasiness of realizing you're part of a group that seems to be dying out.
I'm the member of what might be an endangered species. I belong to a linguistic minority group that makes up about 0.05 percent of the world's population. My family speaks a language called Konkani. I'm passively fluent in the language; I understand it when it's spoken, but I can't speak it (go figure).
Unlike Germany's case, though, Konkanis aren't at risk of dying out because of falling birthrates, but, rather, because of intermarriage.
For generations, Konkanis married Konkanis. It made perfect sense to marry someone who spoke your mother tongue and shared a similar culture.
Now days though, as young Konkani adults migrate from rural areas to big cities, to other Indian states and to other countries, and as they seek to marry whomever they want (as opposed to following the tradition of arranged marriage), more Konkanis are marrying people who aren't Konkani. Consequently, their kids don't learn the language since it's not the one spoke in the home.
(In my case, both my parents speak Konkani, but growing up in the United States-away from a larger community of Konkanis-the best I could do was learn to understand the language.)
So, due to intermarriage and migration, fewer children in each subsequent generation may speak Konkani; fewer may identify as Konkani.
The result: Konkani could be a dead language, possibly by the next century.
It's kind of freaky to think that I may belong to a dying breed-that I'm one of the last people with any degree of fluency in a language that may be going the way of Latin and Sanskrit.
What's even freakier, though, are some of the extremist ways in which some people react when they feel threatened by extinction.
Consider what's on the mind of Lamb Gaede of Bakersfield, Calif.,: "The white race is becoming extinct, and we're trying to fight that. My biggest fear is that by the time I'm old, the white race won't even exist anymore."
As members of the musical duo Prussian Blue, Lamb and her sister Lynx-who were featured in the Feb. 9 issue of Recess-sing songs promoting racial separation.
Birthrates among white Americans have been below replacement levels since 1971, writes Phillip Longman, author of the book The Empty Cradle. He conjectures if U.S. fertility patterns approach those in western Europe, we might see increased xenophobia and racial tensions.
I really hope we don't go down that route. In an era of globalization, it doesn't make sense morally or economically.
I also hope we don't try to put women back in the home to make more babies. Rather, falling birthrates provide an impetus for more family-friendly work policies such as increased opportunities for part-time work and affordable daycare. At a time when working adults may have to pay higher taxes to support pensions and healthcare for elderly baby boomers, it hardly makes sense to pull women from the labor force.
For me as a Konkani, I accept that change is simply part of the human condition. It'll be a little sad if one day there are no more Konkanis, but I don't think that justifies an extreme response, such as eschewing intermarriage.
Fear of change is natural. In the play The Fiddler on the Roof, the Jewish father feels torn between adhering to the tradition of arranged marriage and allowing his daughters to marry men with whom they're in love. In Thomas Friedman's book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, the Lexus represents the dizzying pace of globalization while the olive tree represents the tug to stay rooted in tradition.
As Germany and other industrialized countries face population decline, let's hope that fear of change doesn't lead to draconian reactions.
Preeti Aroon is a graduate student in public policy. Her column runs every other Wednesday. Toss in your two cents at: http://preetiontheweb.blogspot.com
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