Languages are dying quicker than they ever have before.
By 2100, UNESCO estimates that half of the ~6,700 languages in the world may have disappeared.
Every two weeks, a language is lost after its final living speaker dies, the Living Institute for Endangered Languages says.
We lose a lot when a language goes extinct. Not only do written and spoken words disappear, but culture is also lost.
Languages can be translated for basic comprehension, but some words or phrases may be so specific to a culture that they are untranslatable.
Knowledge of the world and nature can vanish too. For thousands of years, indigenous groups have lived among particular animals and plants in nature. They have learned animals’ behaviors and experimented with different plants for medicines and cures. With so many indigenous languages undocumented, we lose valuable information about science and medicine when they go extinct.
In 2010, Boa Sr., the last fluent speaker of Bo, a language from the Bay of Bengal’s Andaman Islands, died at 85. Andamanese languages carry a rich history, tracing back 70,000 years to the first descendants of migrators from Africa. When Boa Sr. passed away, the language of Bo and the millennia of human heritage it represented also died.
National Geographic and Living Tongues have partnered on the Enduring Voices project to identify language hotspots — areas on each continent where languages are at the greatest risk of extinction — and help preserve these endangered languages.
Northern Australia
1. Aboriginal languages: In Northern Australia, the languages of Aboriginal peoples are very endangered. According to Australia’s Department of Aboriginal Affairs, 250 different indigenous languages existed in Australia when white settlers arrived in the late 1700s. Today, more than half are no longer spoken. The most threatened Aboriginal languages include Magati Ke, with three surviving speakers, and Amurdag, with one.
Central South America
2. Kallawaya— As dominant languages such as Spanish and Portuguese flourished, indigenous languages of Central South America died off. The Kallawaya, living in the Andes Mountains of Bolivia, have worked as traditional healers since the days of the Inca Empire and maintained a secret language that holds information on thousands of medicinal plants. The language is passed between generations, but fewer than 100 speakers exist today.
3. Chipaya— The Chipaya language has also suffered as more speakers shift to speaking Spanish. 1,000 – 1, 500 speak the language in the southern highlands of Bolivia.
Northwest Pacific Plateau
Along the west coasts of British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, nearly zero children and few young adults speak the indigenous languages of their tribes. As the youth favor English, the indigenous languages become more endangered.
4. Siletz Dee-ni— In Oregon, the language Siletz Dee-ni used to be spoken by many natives, but now only one fluent speaker remains. At the Siletz Valley School, children are taught in the language twice a week in an effort to preserve it, according to this Huffington Post article.
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