60% of languages may go (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

60% of languages may go

06/08/2004 07:09  - (SA) 
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1568950,00.html 

Leipzig - More than 60% of the world's 6 700 spoken languages and
dialects are threatened with eventual extinction due to the domination
of a few widely used languages, a linguist warned on Thursday.

Balthasar Bickel of Leipzig University said that in some cases there
were minority languages "spoken only by two or three old people."

He was speaking on the opening day of an international linguistic
congress here called Syntax of the World's Languages.

The meeting, ending on Sunday, is attended by about 200 specialists from
around the world who will consider the future of minority languages
such as Breton, the native Celtic language of Brittany in western
France, and Zulu, the Bantu tongue of South Africa.

Edited by Andrea Botha