Post by Trotxâ on Sept 24, 2007 23:58:08 GMT -6
Vanishing Languages Identified
Oklahoma Is Among Places Where Tongues Are Disappearing
Of the estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world, one dies out every two weeks.
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Oklahoma has earned the dubious distinction of being one of the five worst "language-loss hotspots" in the world -- places where native languages are going extinct the fastest -- according to an analysis released yesterday.
The Sooner State's inclusion in the global top five is a reminder, researchers said, that the United States has a long history of linguistic diversity and that the problem of language extinctions is not limited to distant lands.
Of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken, about half are expected to disappear in this century, said K. David Harrison, a Swarthmore College linguist and co-director of the Enduring Voices project. That collaboration between the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages of Salem, Ore., assembled the latest statistics on global language loss.
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About 80 percent of the world's people speak 83 languages, while about 3,500 languages are spoken by just 0.2 percent of the world's population. Attempts to commune with those minorities can turn unintentionally comedic, said Gregory Anderson, co-director of the Enduring Voices project.
Talking to a woman who is one of the 20 remaining Bardi speakers in Australia, Anderson once mispronounced an "r," which resulted in him asking, "What kangaroo are you from?" instead of "What country are you from?"
No interpreter was needed to understand the Bardi laughter that followed.
See the whole article in the Washington Post
