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One Language Disappears Every 14 Days

This is astounding news.

One of the world's 7,000 distinct languages disappears every 14 days, an extinction rate exceeding that of birds, mammals or plants, researchers said Tuesday.

At least 20% of the world's languages are in imminent danger of becoming extinct as their last speakers die off, compared with about 18% of mammals, 8% of plants and 5% of birds....

Half of the world's languages have disappeared in the last 500 years, and half of the remainder are likely to vanish during this century...

Fantastic quote from K. David Harrison, the expert on languages that is cited in the article: "When we lose a language, we lose centuries of thinking about time, seasons, sea creatures, reindeer, edible flowers, mathematics, landscapes, myths, music, the unknown and the everyday." Harrison works at something called the "Institute for Endangered Languages." Check that out here.

The folks there have identified the areas in the world where the most languages are going extinct, and it turns out one such hotspot is in Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. Click the link for more.

Update: Should have linked this earlier. Here's Mother Jones' recent cover story on animal extinction.

Posted by Jonathan Stein on 09/19/07 at 7:33 AM | E-mail | Print | Digg | de.licio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Yahoo! MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Netscape | Google |