John writes " - - - Hope this
helps"
It sure does! I'm here to learn and much of this
was new to me. I've heard that many languages are going extinct today, but had
no idea of the dimensions of this. Our world must be in a very strange state
right now, compared to the last 10,000 or 100,000 years of human history,
dominated by just a few extremely large languages.
150,000 languages... And when a language
disappears, it takes a lot with it: stories, myths, religious beliefs. I'm not
worried that humanity will ever run out of its ability to create new stories,
languages etc, but still... I used to believe the world was quickly
growing culturally, but it is apparently shrinking as well as growing. Or, if
you prefer the pessimistic view - we lost all this in exchange for a global
culture we all can relate to: a can of Coke and a bunch of soap operas.
Ha!