Language Extinction:

There are 5 primary zones where languages are most likely to die out: Central South America, Oklahoma and the
Southwest in the USA, Northern Australia, Eastern Siberia, and North America’s upper pacific coastal zone.

7000 languages spoken globally, with half endangered and likely to disappear this century (2900 or 41%), and
roughly 2 disappearing each week. At current rates, 90% of all languages will be extinct in a century. “Virtually all the
[Minority] languages in the US and Canada are endangered”- Peter Austin, professor of Field Linguistics at University
of London”

This is due to deliberate interference (Neo-colonialism, imperialism, linguicide) or gradual change (people shifting to
another language as more people speak it). There are two ways a language dies out: the death of its final speaker, or
its gradual annihilation by another language.  “A lot of people invoke social Darwinism to say ‘who cares’,” says Mark
Turin, linguist at Yale University. “But we spend huge amounts of money protecting species and biodiversity, so why
should it be that the one thing that makes us singularly human shouldn’t be similarly nourished and protected?”

Half of these languages have no written form and are spread from parent to child. Language faces extinction faster
than natural life

 “How many other traditions are out there in the world that we’ll never know about because no-one recorded them
before the language disappeared?”- Peter Austin

The Living Tongues institute makes efforts to save endangered languages by recording speaking and creating basic
word lists from remaining speakers, and preparation of children’s novels in that language

231 Australian Indigenous languages (nearly all endangered, speakers are dying out) , 113 languages spoken in the
Andes and the Amazon Basin (being replaced by Quechua and Portuguese/Spanish) (Secret tongues are spoken,
usually for preservation of medicinal plants), 54 languages in the Northwest Pacific (Oregon, British Columbia, and
Washington State, Eastern Siberian languages are being destroyed by Soviet/Russian policy, making Siberians speak
Sakha and Russian. Forty Native American languages are spoken in Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, primarily on
Reservations.

83 “global” languages account for 80% of the world population (Important ones are Chinese, English, Spanish,
Portuguese, French, and Russian)

Languages can become rusty if not spoken “I realised Kisyani exists more in my imagination than in practice, this is
how languages die” -Salikoko Mufwene, one of the last few speakers of Kisyani, spoken in the DRC

“All of these things convey a culture, a way of interpreting human behaviour and emotion that’s not conveyed the
same way as in the English language,”- Peter Austin

“How many other traditions are out there in the world that we’ll never know about because no-one recorded them
before the language disappeared?” – Peter Austin

“Make travel easier, international communication more straightforward, and provide more economic opportunity”-
Dan McIntyre

“Sharing a single language is a guarantor of mutual understanding and peace, a world of new alliances and global
solidarity”- Edgar W. Schneider