watching it rise

The languages of extinction: The world’s endangered tongues: on David Harrison’s work on endangered languages.

For the Nivkh people of eastern Siberia, it’s not as easy as one, two, three. Depending on whether they are talking about skis or boats or batches of dried fish, there are different ways of counting. Twenty-six different ways in fact. Small wonder, then, that 90 per cent of Nivkhs choose to communicate in Russian but that choice has put Nivkh on the list of endangered languages.

And it is not alone. Linguists believe half the languages in the world will be extinct by the end of the century. The 80 major languages such as English, Russian and Mandarin are spoken by about 80 per cent of the global population, while the 3,500 linguistic minnows have just 0.2 per cent of the world keeping them alive.
– Claire Soares

Via ArtsJournal | Posted in language |