More than 1,500 endangered languages could disappear completely by the end of the century. This is the warning of the first study of its kind published this weekend in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. The researchers, from the National University of Australia (ANU) and the University of Queensland, examined 6,511 spoken languages in 51 different categories. They examined a number of parameters regarding language maintenance, including speaker population, documentation, legal recognition, and environmental characteristics.
The researchers found that out of about 7,000 languages still spoken today around the world, almost half of them are at risk of disappearing completely, and that without immediate intervention – the world could lose at least one language a month. In addition, it has become clear that in many places, including Australia, languages have been “silenced” over the years as a result of colonial policies designed to suppress indigenous languages. In many cases the natives were punished if they spoke their language.
The researchers identified a variety of factors that put languages at serious risk of extinction, including a larger number of roads connecting state and city and villages to towns, which may encourage more population movement, causing dominant languages to trample on smaller languages. A greater danger has also been associated with changing higher average learning than in the past, suggesting that formal education contributes to the loss of diversity in language and proficiency in minority languages.
In order to deal with the growing threat, the researchers called for an “urgent investment” in language documentation and the need to build curricula that support bilingual education and other programs. “When a language is lost, or it is ‘old’ as we call languages that are no longer spoken, we lose so much of our human cultural diversity. Every language is brilliant in its own way,” the researchers concluded.
Despite the dismal conclusions, the researchers added a glimmer of hope when they argued that “despite the languages we are likely to lose in the current century there are still fluent speakers. We have a chance to invest in supporting communities to revive native languages and preserve them for future generations.” And what will happen to the Hebrew language? Although researchers can not really guarantee whether the language will be preserved for many years to come, the main argument is that even if it does not continue to exist on a regular basis, its characteristics will remain in the distant future.
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