The rest is silence (fwd link)

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The rest is silence

Languages are dying with startling rapidity. Linguist Nicholas Evans explains
why it matters, writes Nicolas Rothwell | July 18, 2009

Article from: The Australian

AT the outset of his broad, engaging survey of the world's endangered languages,
Nicholas Evans describes a dry-season journey he made recently down the dusty
road that leads from Wilyi, on the Top End coastline, to the inland township of
Jabiru.

In a few hours, over the course of a mere 200scrub-filled kilometres, Evans
passed through the domains of seven separate languages from four distinct
families. Some of those indigenous languages are still fairly strong: Bininj
Gun-wok, the common tongue of the region's main community, has more than 1500
speakers. Some, though, are in terminal decline: the Amurdak language has two
speakers left, and another, Manangkardi, has ceased to be spoken.

There's a great deal of extinction in Dying Words, Evans's swirling, intensely
personal account of the joys and travails of his research during the past three
decades. Languages falter and die, their last speakers clinging on as experts --
recording devices at the ready -- snatch up the final scraps of knowledge from a
disappearing realm of thought. Yet, for all that, the tale is upbeat, vital,
full of joy and wonder at the diversity of human life. The book reflects the
temper of the author and serves not just as a layman's guide to the patterns
visible in the world's linguistic kaleidoscope, but also as an obliquely drawn
intellectual self-portrait.

Access full article below:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25781511-16947,00.html