Languages disappearing
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- While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks, according to linguistic experts struggling to save at least some of them.
- Losing languages means losing knowledge, says K. David Harrison, an assistant professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College.
"When we lose a language, we lose centuries of human thinking about time, seasons, sea creatures, reindeer, edible flowers, mathematics, landscapes, myths, music, the unknown and the everyday."
As many as half of the current languages have never been written down, he estimated.
That means, if the last speaker of many of these vanished tomorrow, the language would be lost because there is no dictionary, no literature, no text of any kind, he said.
If its never been written down then there isn't a whole lot that can be researched. And does anyone really think one speaker of the language knows all the myths, knowledge, ect... that was known in the that language?
No written records equals useless language.
Labels: Current Events
posted by Gary @ 5:34 PM
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A lot of these languages that are "dissappearing" are tribal languages in the Amazon and Africa. You are right in saying not a whole lot can be learned from a language without "characters".
After rereading what I wrote, I suppose I should have added to the end of my last sentence, "for research" since vocal it is still useful. ;)
Did you say before that you were interested, or someone you know is interested, in old languages? Or am I thinking of someone else?
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