From: Mark Odegard
Message: 2797
Date: 2000-07-09
----- Original Message -----From: Håkan LindgrenI'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!The one language that immediately comes to mind is Ket, the sole survivor of what I have heard referenced as the Yeneseian family of languages, historically located in northwestern Siberia. The Ethnologue database says there are about 900 speakers left; an article I read a few years ago suggested there were only 500. This is not just the death of a single language, but of an entire language FAMILY.In the remoter reaches of New Guinea or the Amazon, there are probably a few new languages left to discover, but not too many, I think.The real question should not be how many languages will go extinct, but how many language families are headed that way.Mark.