New atlas shows dying languages around the world (fwd link)

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New atlas shows dying languages around the world

By DHEEPTHI NAMASIVAYAM – 1 hour ago

PARIS (AP) — Only one native speaker of Livonian remains on Earth, in Latvia.
The Alaskan language Eyak went extinct last year when its last surviving
speaker passed away. Those are just two of the nearly 2,500 languages that
UNESCO says are in danger of becoming extinct or have recently disappeared.
That's out of a total of 6,000 world languages.

In a presentation Thursday of a new world atlas of endangered languages,
linguists stressed the list is not restricted to small or far-flung countries.
They also sought to encourage immigrants to treasure their native languages.

"Language endangerment is a universal phenomenon," said Christopher Moseley, an
Australian linguist who edited the atlas' third edition, which is to appear in
digital and paper versions.

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