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Many linguists predict that at least half of the world's 6,000 or so languages will be 1-11
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dead or dying by the year 2050. Languages are becoming extinct at twice the rate of
endangered mammals and four times the rate of endangered birds.
If this trend
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continues, the world of the future could be dominated by a dozen or fewer languages.
Even higher rates of linguistic devastation are possible. Michael Krauss, director of 1-12
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the Alaska Native Language Center, suggests that as many as 90 percent of languages
could become moribund or extinct by 2100. According to Krauss, 20 percent to 40
percent of languages are already moribund, and only 5 percent to 10 percent are "safe"
in the sense of being widely spoken or having official status. If people "become wise
10 and turn it around," Krauss says, the number of dead or dying languages could be
more like 50 percent by 2100 and that's the best-case scenario.
The definition of a healthy language is one that acquires new speakers, No matter 1-13
how many adults use the language, if it isn't passed to the next generation, its fate is
already sealed. Although a language may continue to exist for a long time as a second
15 or ceremonial language, it is moribund as soon as children stop learning it. For example,
out of twenty native Alaskan languages, only two are still being learned by children.
Although language extinction is sad for the people involved,) why should the rest of
us care? What effect will other people's language loss have on the future of people who
speak English, for example? (A)Replacing à minor language with a more widespread
one may even seem like a good thing, allowing people to communicate with each other
more easily. But language diversity is as important as biological diversity.
Andrew Woodfield, director of the Centre for Theories of Language and Learning 1-14
in Bristol, England, suggested in a 1995 seminar on language conservation that people
do not yet know all the ways in which linguistic diversity is important. "The fact is, no
s one knows exactly what riches are hidden inside the less-studied languages," he says.
Woodfield compares one argument for conserving unstudied endangered plants
(that they may be medically valuable with the argument for conserving endangered
languages. "We have inductive evidence based on past studies of well-known languages
that there will be riches, even though we do not know what they will be. (B) It seems
paradoxical but it's true. By allowing languages to die out, the human race is destroying
things it doesn't understand," he argues.
Stephen Wurm, in his introduction to the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger 1-
