VANISHING VOICES

Language is the instrument through which we share our knowledge, ideas and identity from one generation to the next. Therefore, every single language is a unique snapshot of the world that helps people communicate and connect with each other. There are approximately 7.000 languages today, but the number of widely used languages among the majority of people is only 400, not even close to 1.000. The rest of the people use the remaining languages, which means that those languages have only a few speakers. Around 18 languages have only one remaining speaker of their own. From Alaska to Australia, about 3.500 languages, half of the world’s spoken languages are on the brink of extinction since every two weeks a language dies. With an easy calculation, one can quickly estimate that these languages are expected to be extinct by the end of the 21st century. In most cases, however, languages die slowly when people prefer speaking a common language and so stop using their native tongues. For example, as the most widely used language, English overcomes many other native tongues when people abandon their mother tongue.

Do you know that most of the existing languages are spoken only by fewer than ten people? Or do you know that some languages have disappeared instantly, when their communities were wiped out by natural disasters? When the last fluent speaker of a language dies, we lose centuries of knowledge and traditions that have helped shape who we are. When a language is lost, centuries of human culture is also lost with all the encrypted history, knowledge and memories related to it. Many linguists state that languages have been vanishing faster than ever for the last 25 years and the latest research reveals that most of these languages are under risk because they don’t have written records anywhere. Therefore, the children who use their mother tongue as a means of communication might be holding the solution to the future of these languages that are under the risk of extinction.