Piece on Language Endangerment in November's Prospect

[Nicholas Ostler]

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Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 14:41:02 +0100
To: endangered-languages-l-carmen.murdoch.edu.au at chibcha.demon.co.uk
From: Nicholas Ostler <nostler at chibcha.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Piece on Language Endangerment in November's Prospect

Dear Concerned Public

You may be interested to note that there is a piece on Endangered Languages
in the influential British opinion magazine Prospect for this November.

Written by David Crystal, it is called "The death of language", (pp. 56-8).

It starts in Cameroun  with the death of Kasabe in 1995, and the impending
death of Luo, and continues with a solid run-through of the issues
How many languages are threatened?
Why are so many languages dying?
Why should we care?
It is distinctive, I feel, in pointing out the financial help that could be
quite economically channeled in these languages' direction.

Prospect is by the repute the current journal of choice among Britain's
movers and shakers.  So we'll see if they take the bait!

To position it, I add that it is in Prospect's series of articles
"Millennium Briefing", which will also feature articles on human behaviour,
consciousness, climate and human history.

The article features contemporary pictures of the last speaker of Luo in
Cameroun, of the last speaker of Cornish in England, and of Spaniards
massacring American Indians, as well as Peter Bruegel's time-tested image
of the Tower of Babel (!).


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                       Nicholas   Ostler
		                                  President
						                Foundation for
                       Endangered Languages
		                         Registered Charity 1070616

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