7
Language Skills
Population and language
Warm up 1 Look at the charts and complete the language fact file with the numbers from the box. 1.39 billion • over 7,000 • 286 • 2,301
FACT FILE World languages Living languages in the world Languages spoken in Asia Languages spoken in Europe Chinese speakers
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Reading 2.08 Read and listen to the text. 2
Endangered languages There are over 7,000 living languages around the world, the majority of which have only a small number of speakers. More than 60% of the earth’s population speak one of only 30 of these languages as their native tongue. English is obviously the most widely spoken language around the world ... or not? Well, no, because Chinese has, in fact, the most number of native speakers with 1.39 billion speakers around the world. Next is Hindi-Urdu with 588 million and then English with 527 million. After that, there is Arabic and Spanish, and then languages such as Russian, Portuguese and French. The result is that two-thirds of the world’s population shares just 12 languages. So what about all the other thousands of languages? The answer is that most languages are spoken by only a small handful of people and that many of them are going to disappear – over 50% by 2100! Linguistic extinction is hitting some countries harder and faster than others – for example, in parts of the west coast of the USA and Australia there are many highly endangered languages that risk disappearing altogether. After all, do we all know Newar or Mon, or Muji and Chepang languages? 104
The effects of language extinction could be culturally devastating. Many of these endangered languages are such an important key to local knowledge, customs and traditions. This cultural heritage is going to inevitably disappear together with the language. As a result of this linguistic risk, organisations are developing projects around the world that aim to prevent languages from becoming extinct. One of these is The Enduring Voices Project and another is the Endangered Languages Project which also uses modern technology to document, preserve and teach these endangered languages. One member of the project group said, ‘We are going to put together a catalogue of text, audio and video files online which documents a wide range of languages that are at risk of disappearing, in order to preserve them. These languages really are so important to the world’s cultural heritage that their preservation is imperative for future generations. An exhibition of our project opens in London next are spoken sono parlate week. We are not going to let handful manciata these cultures disappear’. heritage patrimonio