Endangered languages

Endangered languages is the term commonly used for the oral/aural languages (spoken) or written Languages which are used means a of communication by a very small group, and are in danger of disappearing. The study of language is commonly called Linguistics.

Quotes

 * According to Ethnologue, there are approximately 7,105 living languages in the world.
 * In The 7000 Languages Project and Transparent Language's HELP Program


 * World Population is 6,716,664,407, Living Languages are 7,105 comprising institutional: 682, Developing: 1,534, Vigorous: 2,502, In Trouble: 1,481, Dying: 906.
 * In Ethnologue language of the World


 * ...that parents are no longer teaching the language to their children and are not using it actively in everyday matters.
 * Ethnologue’s definition of endangered languages in Endangered Languages: Introduction


 * What are you waiting for? Don’t ask permission to save your language. Just do it.
 * Darrell Kipp, in
 * An alternate version: First of all, never ask permission to save your language. Do not … If there are three or four of you in the community who want to start a small tribal language school, then go ahead and do it, but if you ask permission, what do you think you will be told? … Second, don't wait around for some big federal grant. Do it . The Hebrew language was once spoken by only a few thousand...
 * Darrell Robes Kipp, in American Indian nations: yesterday, today, and tomorrow quoted by George P. Horse Capture, ‎Duane Champagne, ‎Chandler C. Jackson], p. 110


 * Languages are always changing but in many cases the life of a language ends. In many areas of the world, economic, military, social and other pressures are causing communities to stop speaking their traditional languages, and turn to other, typically more dominant, languages. This can be a social, cultural and scientific disaster because languages express the unique knowledge, history and worldview of their communities; and each language is a specially evolved variation of the human capacity for communication.
 * In Endangered Languages


 * The Foundation for Endangered Languages supports, enables and assists the documentation, protection and promotion of endangered languages.
 * In Foundation for Endangered Languages


 * You probably know that many of the world's plants and animals are in danger of extinction, but did you know that many human languages are in danger of becoming extinct, too? Globalization has helped to make the world a smaller place. But it has also contributed to the loss of many languages around the world. Every two weeks another language disappears forever! Once a language is lost, humanity loses a part of our rich heritage. Helping to preserve endangered languages is important to keep traditions alive.
 * UNESCO, in What's your Issue for a better world? Language Preservation


 * The Gaelic-speaking East Sutherland fisherfolk have in one sense already been proven 'wrong', in that some of the youngest members of their own kin circles have begun to berate them for choosing not to transmit the ancestral language and so allowing it to die.
 * Nancy Dorian (in Language Death, David Crystal, p. 106)

Endangered Languages: Language Loss and Community Response
Lenore A. Grenoble, Lindsay J. Whaley Endangered Languages: Language Loss and Community Response
 * The staying power of endangered languages must be intimately tied to a thousand intimate or small-scale network processes, processes too gratifying and rewarding to surrender even if they do not quite amount to the pursuit of higher reaches of power and modernity.
 * Joshua Fishman, in  p. 21


 * It might be said with a certain metaphoric license that languages are seldom admired to death but are frequently despised to death.
 * Lenore A. Grenoble, Lindsay J. Whaley, in p. 3


 * ...for endangered languages must take into account the potential of economic issues to outweigh all others combined, although this a potential, not an absolute: ranking economic concerns higher than other variables is not tantamount to assigning economic factors complete supremacy.
 * Lenore A. Grenoble, Lindsay J. Whaley, in p. 21
 * The majority of endangered languages come from oral culture, where converting the language to a written form poses certain consequences for the continued use of these languages.
 * Lenore A. Grenoble, Lindsay J. Whaley, in p. 34

Are dying languages worth saving
British Procrastinating Corporation (BBC) Are dying languages worth saving?
 * About 6,000 different languages are spoken around the world. But the Foundation for Endangered Languages estimates that between 500 and 1,000 of those are spoken by only a handful of people. And every year the world loses around 25 mother tongues. That equates to losing 250 languages over a decade - a sad prospect for some.
 * BBC


 * And when languages are lost most of the knowledge that went with them gets lost. People do care about identity as they want to be different. Nowadays we want access to everything but we don't want to be thought of as no more than people on the other side of the world.
 * Nicholas Ostler


 * In one sense you could call it a cultural loss. But that makes no sense because cultural forms are lost all the time. To say every cultural form should exist forever is ridiculous. And when governments try to prop languages up, it shows a desire to cling to the past rather than move forwards.
 * Kenan Malik on the aspect of loss to the culture due to loss of a language.


 * To have a public policy that a certain culture or language should be preserved shows a fundamental misunderstanding. I don't see why it's in the public good to preserve Manx or Cornish or any other language for that matter. In the end, whether or not a language is viable is very simple. If a language is one that people don't participate in, it's not a language anymore.
 * Kenan Malik on the issue of policy for preserving languages.


 * Language is not a plant that rises and falls, lives and decays. It's a tool that's perfectly adapted by the people using it. Get on with living and talking.
 * Philip Howard