Dying dialects: India tops the list of countries with the greatest number of endangered languages, 196 in all, followed by the United States which stands to lose 192.
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PARIS: The world has lost Manx in the Isle of Man, Ubykh in Turkey and last year Alaska's last native speaker of Eyak, Marie Smith Jones, died, taking the aboriginal language with her.
Of the 6,900 languages spoken in the world, some 2,500 are endangered, the UN's cultural agency UNESCO said last week as it released its latest atlas of world languages.
That represents a multi-fold increase from the last atlas compiled in 2001, which listed 900 languages threatened with extinction. But experts say this is more the result of better research tools than of an increasingly dire situation for the world's many tongues.
Disheartening news
Still there is disheartening news. There are 199 languages in the world spoken by fewer than a dozen people, including Karaim which has six speakers in Ukraine and Wichita, spoken by 10 people in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The last four speakers of Lengilu talk among themselves in Indonesia.
Prospects are a marginally better for some 178 other languages, spoken by between 10 and 150 people.
More than 200 languages have become extinct over the last three generations such as Ubykh that fell silent in 1992 when Tefvic Esenc passed on, Aasax in Tanzania, which disappeared in 1976, and Manx in 1974.
India tops the list of countries with the greatest number of endangered languages, 196 in all, followed by the United States which stands to lose 192 and Indonesia, where 147 are in peril.
Australian linguist Christopher Moseley, who headed the atlas' team of 25 experts, noted that countries with rich linguistic diversity like India and the United States are also facing the greatest threat of language extinction.
Melting pot
Even Sub-Saharan Africa's melting pot of some 2,000 languages is expected to shrink by at least 10 per cent over the coming century, according to UNESCO.
On UNESCO's rating scale, 538 languages are critically endangered, 502 severely endangered, 632 definitely endangered and 607 unsafe.
On a brighter note, Papua New Guinea, the country of 800 languages, the most diverse in the world, has only 88 endangered dialects. Certain languages are even showing signs of a revival, like Cornish, a Celtic language spoken in Cornwall, southern England, and Sishee in New Caledonia.
Governments in Peru, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and Mexico have been successful in their efforts to prevent indigenous languages from dying out.
UNESCO deputy director Francoise Riviere applauded government efforts to support linguistic diversity but added that "people have to be proud to speak their language" to ensure it thrives.
time factor
Languages change over time. They introduce new words, meanings and accent changes greatly. You can call this death, but I call it development. If people stop using one language, they develop the ability to speak a new language. Nothing is necessarily lost or dead.
In the UK and Ireland there are 6 languages that I know of. Obviously English, but the Gaelic languages include Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Cornish and arguably Ulster-Scots. The Gaelic languages are not particularly well connected. Just because you speak Irish does not mean that you will be able to speak Cornish or Welsh. This is because these languages developed from a common group of Gaelic languages over many hundreds of years, and the locations are physically separated.
Even English has changed considerably over the past 1000 years. So much so that most of us would not be able to understand someone that spoke in a 500 year old version of English. Most of us would struggle to understand someone from 100 years ago, and today struggle to understand different accents. You cant say that English has died, because we still speak it, but it has changed and developed into something almost totally different and will continue to do so.
Sounds great but it is not accurate
There is a difference between language evolution and language death. This is a common prejudice with most English speaking people.
Every language has words to express concepts and ideas that do not exist in other languages. Everyone has probably heard someone say something like "this word doesn't have a match in English but it sort of means..." Every time a language dies it takes with it unique ideas and concepts that do not exist in any of the other major languages. As we lose the diversity of language we also lose diversity in thoughts, concepts and ideas that do not exist in English, Chinese, Russian, Hindi or any of the remaining languages. It's more than just history. It's more than just quaint backwards people who can't speak English. It's culture itself.
I agree with the comment
I agree with the comment above since i work as a translator so i understand and know very well regarding this matter. It is difficult to sometimes to find words, which relate to another in a different language and like what you said we do tend to always explain by stating "it means something like..." because sometimes there really isn't a spot-on word that can accurately relate to their meaning. This sometimes simply is due to the word or phrase having had a long history in its creation and use and every language obviously have been developed in their own time frame and the then present people's different perception of the world that creates them too. It is culture itself.
Languages
As other commentators have said languages are more valuable than their function. Robert Adler sums it up well when he wrote a review of Joanna Nichol's book 'Voices from the Past' in the UK New Scientist. "How we speak doesn't just say what we want it to; it whispers about who we are and where we've been, tattles about our origins and ancestors. The same holds true for languages as a whole. The intricacies of their vocabulary and grammar hold clues to thousands of years of human history and prehistory.
That hidden, other voice of language captivated linguist Johanna Nichols at an early age and has dominated her life ever since. For over a decade, she trekked the far reaches of the Russian Federation; Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia to study and preserve native languages."
For myself I try to keep Scottish words alive using words and cartoons at http://www.stooryduster.co.uk
Languages are not just different ways to say the same thing.
Every language has words to express concepts and ideas that do not exist in other languages. Everyone has probably heard someone say something like "this word doesn't have a match in English but it sort of means..." Every time a language dies it takes with it unique ideas and concepts that do not exist in any of the other major languages. As we lose the diversity of language we also lose diversity in thoughts, concepts and ideas that do not exist in English, Chinese, Russian, Hindi or any of the remaining languages. It's more than just history. It's more than just quaint backwards people who can't speak English. It's culture itself.