According to the Boston Globe, "while an estimated 7000 languages are spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks." As the number of languages spoken in the world rapidly decreases, the United Nations has declared 2008 to be the International Year of Languages. Having worked directly among a people group in Central America whose language is vanishing, I'm particularly interested in this theme.
The dynamics around language extinction are complex, involving external factors like economics and discrimination, and internal factors like self perception and attitudes toward one's own group and towards others. Unlike endangered plants, whose seeds can be preserved in seed banks, and endangered animals that can be protected on nature preserves, endangered languages survive only if people speak them. This is particularly challenging when those people have already formulated reasons for no longer speaking their parents' tongue.
Dictionaries, documentary films and ethnographic studies are only snapshots of the way things were, and awareness campaigns usually target non-speakers of endangered languages (like you, dear reader). Even mother tongue education programs can be compromised if there is no corpus of reading material once children leave school.
I'll watch the events around this theme closely, but I won't expect any miracles. Nevertheless, as part of my own participation in this international year, I have added the category Languages and linguistics to this blog, and I have already retrofitted some blog posts to reflect the change.
Follow this link to the UNESCO site with resources for commemorating the International Year of Languages.
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