FYI: National Public Radio feature on endangered languages

[Scott McGinnis]

Via Hal Schiffman at the Penn language policy listserv...


Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 11:16:25 EST
From: Steven Bird <sb at unagi.cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: Endangered languages on U.S. National Public Radio



On Friday 8 March, NPR Science Friday ran a program on endangered
languages, involving Larry Kaplan (ANLC), Jerry Edmondson (UT Arlington)
and myself.  The show featured sound clips from indigenous languages in
Africa, Asia and North America.

Here is the description of the show from the Science Friday website:

 "You hear about endangered species all the time -- but when was the
last time you thought about languages being endangered? On the other
hand, when was the last time you heard someone speaking Woria, or
Yevanic, or Areeba?

"The decline of these and other languages around the world is closely
connected to the issue of globalization. In this hour of Science Friday,
we'll talk about the issue of endangered languages, hear some of them in
action, and find out why some researchers are working to understand and
preserve these dying tongues.

"Some linguists predict that by the end of this century half of the
languages now spoken in the world will be extinct. How is a culture
shaped by its language? Does it really matter if we all speak the same
language one day?"

For more information, please see the website for the show:
  http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2002/Mar/hour2_030802.html

The audio recording for the show is available in the NPR archive:
  http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/totn/20020308.totn.02.ram

Steven Bird

-
Steven.Bird at ldc.upenn.edu  http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/sb
Assoc Director, LDC; Adj Assoc Prof, CIS & Linguistics Linguistic Data
Consortium, University of Pennsylvania 3615 Market St, Suite 200,
Philadelphia, PA 19104-2608