Chart of Languages at Risk of Extinction
About 43% of over 7,000 of the world's languages are endangered. Just 23 languages are spoken by more than half of the world's people, inhabiting upwards of 85% of the land surface of the globe. [1] These same languages are of the cultures primarily responsible for the current global extinction crisis. [2] The extinction rate of languages, and often the people who speak them, is astounding. Up to 95% of languages may be extinct within 100 years. [3]
Language and cultural diversity is often matched by regional biodiversity—suggesting that both language and nature are a single system of diversity. “First World” societies are replacing ancient linguistic cultural diversity with vast “mono-languages.”
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Sources
[2] "A House on Fire: Connecting the Biological and Linguistic Diversity Crises”, K. Suckling, www.animana.org/tab2/23suckling-ahouseonfire.shtml
[3] “The Conservation of Endangered Languages”, Univ. of Bristol, www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Philosophy/CTLL/report.txt
Tags: language, culture, biodiversity, languages at risk of extinction, development
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