Web Gives Kiss Of Life To Dying Languages
Friday, June 22, 2007 at 11:43AM In the rush towards globalisation, many languages and dialects have been left by the wayside and are 'dying out' at a staggering rate of about two a month according to language expert David Crystal, who has written over 50 books on language including The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language.
However, in recent years endangered languages like Welsh, Navajo and Breton have regained popularity in their communities and are now even 'cool' for kids - thanks to the Internet. Crystal explains that the Internet offers endangered languages a chance to have a public voice in a way that would not have been possible before.
In total there are around 6,500 languages still in existence, 50 to 60 of these languages have one last speaker remaining, and around 2,000 have never been written.
"If these languages die, they are gone forever. This is a huge intellectual loss to humanity. The Internet is very important in this respect," says Crystal, "To put it into perspective, only two to four per cent of the world's botanical and zoological species are in serious danger, whereas it's 50 per cent of languages. The language crisis hasn't attracted the same degree of public awareness".
