World's many languages are dying out; can we stop it? (fwd link)

[Aidan Wilson]

I have to say, I found this article particularly hard to read given its 
mash-up of figures and mis-quotations. Consider the opening paragraph:

> According to the new atlas of UNESCO, among the 6,000 languages existing 
> in the world 2,500 of them are about to disappear or have already stopped 
> their existence. About 3,000 languages irrevocably lose their carriers 
> every year. Thus, out of 97 percent of the population of the planet only 4 
> percent are carriers of the languages. Most likely, by the end of the 21st 
> century dominating languages will supersede 90 percent of all the existing 
> ones.

I had to re-read it several times to get what it meant, and I was still 
flumoxxed by the bizarre statistic that "out of 97 percent of the 
population of the planet only 4 percent are carriers of the languages", 
and how it works out to be a logical consequence of the purely weird 
number that "About 3,000 languages irrevocably lose their carriers every 
year". It made no sense to me at all until I read the actual Unesco quote 
and discover just where these confused stats came from. Luckily the 
original makes sense:

> About 97% of the world’s people speak about 4% of the world’s languages; 
> and conversely, about 96% of the world’s languages are spoken by about 3% 
> of the world’s people. Most of the world’s language heterogeneity, then, 
> is under the stewardship of a very small number of people; at least 50% of 
> the world’s nearly six thousand languages are losing speakers. Even 
> languages with many thousands of speakers are no longer being acquired by 
> children. We estimate that about 90% of the world’s languages may be 
> replaced by dominant languages by the end of the 21st century.

The whole article is full of gibberish like this. You think it makes sense 
when pretending to read it, perhaps with tired eyes, but then you read it 
properly and you come across something like:

> In the UNESCO’s report on viability of world languages it is not given the 
> actual definitions of language, dialects and adverbs.

And you just have to sigh. It was, however, an entertaining read.

-- 
Aidan Wilson

The University of Sydney
+612 9036 9558
+61428 458 969
aidan.wilson at usyd.edu.au

On Wed, 17 Jun 2009, phil cash cash wrote:

> World's many languages are dying out; can we stop it?
>
> June 16, 6:34 PM
> USA
>
> According to the new atlas of UNESCO, among the 6,000 languages existing in the
> world 2,500 of them are about to disappear or have already stopped their
> existence. About 3,000 languages irrevocably lose their carriers every year.
> Thus, out of 97 percent of the population of the planet only 4 percent are
> carriers of the languages. Most likely, by the end of the 21st century
> dominating languages will supersede 90 percent of all the existing ones.
>
> Access full article below:
> http://www.examiner.com/x-2627-DC-International-Travel-Examiner~y2009m6d16-Worlds-many-languages-are-dying-out-can-we-stop-it
>