Did you know that:
Every 14 days a language dies. By 2100, more than half of the more than 7,000 languages spoken on Earth—many not yet recorded—may disappear.
According to Ethnologue, 473 languages currently are close to extinction. In Americas alone, 182 are endangered.
Rosetta Project aims to create a global library of human languages. Its Rosetta Disk contains 14,000 pages (each page an image) etched onto its surface – to be read using 500x microscope.
According to one research, when two languages compete, only one survives while the other declines exponentially. Policies, education and advertising can slow this process.
Smaller nations are more subject to the danger of cultural assimilation and language loss, especially in today’s globalized and ever- super- integrated world.
Another measure to try and cope with language extinction widely used is translating all and every word normally internationally used – e.g. hacker, computer, monitoring, even champagne…:)
Thanks Anoush for valuable feedback!
Indeed smaller nations are more prone, but bigger nations are nto exempted either. Take Papua New Guinea as an exmaple, with its more than 1000 languages (in some parts, every few miles, there is a completely new language).
Westernization or “Americanization” – if you will – is spreading far and wide, not sparing small or big.
Our role is to try to preserve what we can.