NOTES ON QUOTES: Losing Languages And Saving Mother Tongues (fwd link)

[Richard Zane Smith]

"one language dies every 14 days"
hmmmmmm...really?
what happens when there is only 33  languages left?  or 3 languages left?
will they still die every 14 days?
By these statistics, eventually, in time, even English and Mandarin will be
on the chopping block.
each 14 days apart from extinction of course.
maybe by then we'll at least have some silence...from statisticians

statistics are weird.

-Richard


On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 1:06 PM, Phillip E Cash Cash <
cashcash at email.arizona.edu> wrote:

> NOTES ON QUOTES: Losing Languages And Saving Mother Tongues
>
> By Gordon and Marcia Mercer, The Raleigh Telegram
> USA
>
> RALEIGH – “One language dies every 14 days,” says Russ Rymer of the
> National Geographic Society.
>
> By most calculations there are between 6,000 and 7,000 languages on planet
> earth. There is fear, however, that by beginning of the next century 50% to
> 80 % of existing languages will be gone.
>
> Reasons for the mass extinction often involve a larger culture doing
> something, usually bad, to a smaller culture. In the United States, for
> example, even into the 1950s, Native American Indian children were punished
> at school for speaking in their native tongue.
>
> Article Posted: Monday, August 27th, 2012.
>
> Access full article below:
> http://raleightelegram.com/201208273013
>



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