What are the next lost lanuages?

[Dachs]

I thought Poland has only some 38 million people...?

Apparently around 53 million persons speak Polish these days, not necessarily as a first language.

 

[TheLastOne36]

I thought Poland has only some 38 million people...?

And languages are restricted inside national borders? I'm sure there's much more romanian speakers then the 22 million in Romania.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Coptic is pretty much gone.

 

[Mirc]

And languages are restricted inside national borders? I'm sure there's much more romanian speakers then the 22 million in Romania.

Yeah, but don't forget it's official in more than a country (Moldova and parts of Serbia too). Just out of curiousity, where are the other 15 million Poles living?

 

[TheLastOne36]

Apparently around 51 million persons speak Polish these days, not necessarily as a first language.

Yes, almost all the Polish people in the british isles aren't counted as polish census, (even though they should since they are only working there) but they all probably speak polish as second or first language. Plus the populations in Germany, then the 2 million in Brazil, and then the huge chunk in Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, then that's before the Population in the rest of Europe, United states and Canada. But that is offtopic.

Edit: Mirc stop crossposting.. I answered your last post here.

 

[holy king]

a language spoken by 100 million people will die out in 150 years?
patroklos, choosing german as example really didnt help your point.

 

[Thorbal]

Incidentally, UNESCO just published a new edition of it´s atlas of endangered languages. Thought you might be interested in it.

Spoiler :

New edition of UNESCO’s Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
Papua New GuineaUNESCO launched the electronic version of the new edition of its Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger on 19 February. This interactive digital tool provides updated data about approximately 2,500 endangered languages around the world and can be continually supplemented, corrected and updated, thanks to contributions from its users.

The Atlas, presented on the eve of International Mother Language Day (21 February), enables searches according to several criteria, and ranks the 2,500 endangered languages that are listed according to five different levels of vitality: unsafe, definitely endangered, severely endangered, critically endangered and extinct.

Some of the data are especially worrying: out of the approximately 6,000 existing languages in the world, more than 200 have become extinct during the last three generations, 538 are critically endangered, 502 severely endangered, 632 definitely endangered and 607 unsafe.

For example, the Atlas states that 199 languages have fewer than ten speakers and 178 others have 10 to 50. Among the languages that have recently become extinct, it mentions Manx (Isle of Man), which died out in 1974 when Ned Maddrell fell forever silent, Aasax (Tanzania), which disappeared in 1976, Ubykh (Turkey) in 1992 with the demise of Tevfik Esenç, and Eyak (Alaska, United States of America), in 2008 with the death of Marie Smith Jones.

As UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura stressed, “The death of a language leads to the disappearance of many forms of intangible cultural heritage, especially the invaluable heritage of traditions and oral expressions of the community that spoke it – from poems and legends to proverbs and jokes. The loss of languages is also detrimental to humanity’s grasp of biodiversity, as they transmit much knowledge about the nature and the universe.”



The work carried out by the more than 30 linguists who worked together on the Atlas shows that the phenomenon of disappearing languages appears in every region and in very variable economic conditions. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where approximately 2,000 languages are spoken (nearly one third of the world total), it is very probable that at least 10 % of them will disappear in the next hundred years. The Atlas furthermore establishes that India, the United States, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico, countries that have great linguistic diversity, are also those which have the greatest number of endangered languages. In Australia, 108 languages are in various degrees of danger. In metropolitan France, 26 languages are endangered: 13 severely endangered, 8 definitely endangered and 5 unsafe.

However, the situation presented in the Atlas is not universally alarming. Thus, Papua New Guinea, the country which has the greatest linguistic diversity on the planet (more than 800 languages are believed to be spoken there), also has relatively few endangered languages (88). Certain languages that are shown as extinct in the Atlas are being actively revitalized, like Cornish (Cornwall) and Sîshëë (New Caledonia), and it is possible that they will become living languages again.

Furthermore, thanks to favourable linguistic policies, there has been an increase in the number of speakers of several indigenous languages. It is the case for Central Aymara and Quechua in Peru, Maori in New Zealand, Guarani in Paraguay and several languages in Canada, the United States and Mexico.

The Atlas also shows that due to economic factors, different linguistic policies and sociological phenomena, a given language may have varying degrees of vitality in different countries.

For Christopher Moseley, an Australian linguist and editor-in-chief of the Atlas, “It would be naïve and oversimplifying to say that the big ex-colonial languages, English, or French or Spanish, are the killers, and all smaller languages are the victims. It is not like that; there is a subtle interplay of forces, and this Atlas will help ordinary people to understand those forces better.”

The creation of this interactive Atlas, made possible with financial assistance from Norway, is part of the UNESCO programme for safeguarding endangered languages. Acting as a clearing house, the Organization facilitates access to available data and maps, and serves as a forum for debate that is open to communities, specialists and national authorities.

****

* The paper version of the Atlas will be published next month

You can also downlad the complete map here, you should take a look at it, very interesting!

http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/UNESCO-EndangeredLanguages-WorldMap-20090218.pdf
(edit: does not seem to open directly for some reason. download it first.)

 

[Aleenik]

It is inevitable with globalization that language barriers will increasingly be breached, and as peope learn multiple languages for use on a regular basis some will gain precidence over others to the point of making many irrelevant.

Which languages in the next 150 years do you see disappering or being reduced to legacy languages such as Latin?

Personally I see some of the less prolific European languages being the first on the chopping block such as Dutch and eventually ones like German and Polish.

The next language to fall will be any one which i see unfit, which is all but the one I speak. Napoleon shall conquer and unite the nations of the world not only through my military might, but also through social means such as us all speaking the same language. Get ready for a French world order, cuz I postponed the invasion of Russia....IM COMING FOR YOU!

 

[holy king]

The next language to fall will be any one which i see unfit, which is all but the one I speak. Napoleon shall conquer and unite the nations of the world not only through my military might, but also through social means such as us all speaking the same language. Get ready for a French world order, cuz I postponed the invasion of Russia....IM COMING FOR YOU!

still on a tactical retreat from moscow?

 

[gangleri2001]

http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/UNESCO-EndangeredLanguages-WorldMap-20090218.pdf

It's not loading.

 

[RedRalph]

None of us in the warsaw pact spoke russian, only a couple buisnessmen and rebel's who needed to understand russian for their survival.

Really? I thoght it was taught in schools in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria as a matter of course?

 

[holy king]

me too...

even in austria it was taught in school during occupation.

 

[Aleenik]

still on a tactical retreat from moscow?

no, i postponed it, so I could come for you..all of you...and force you to speak my language and stuff
if you want to fight a million french soldiers, go ahead
but if i where you id just give up and adopt English(ironic i know)

 

[Thorbal]

It's not loading.

Yeah, for some reason it does not open in my Firefox or IE as well. But saving it directly to your hd should work, at least it did for me.

 

[Verbose]

Really? I thoght it was taught in schools in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria as a matter of course?

Sure, but the way I've heard it from various people subjected to "enforced Russian" was that 1) there weren't any Russians around to practice your Russian, on making it a pretty useless accomplishmnt, and 2) one of the most common silent protests against the system was to learn feck all Russian in class.

Even people from the Baltic states, inside the Soviet Union proper, have been proverbial for speaking crappy Russian. I have Swedish mates who have studied Russian, and in Russia been asked if they were from one of the Baltic states. At first they were exatatic over the "praise", until they worked out that "speaking Russian like a Balt" just meant "really, really badly".

 

[TheLastOne36]

Really? I thoght it was taught in schools in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria as a matter of course?

It was offered at the time most likely, but iirc from what my father told me, German and English were much better more popular languages to learn as second language. My father was teaching his friends english for extra money. I can't comment on Bulgaria, but i'm guessing it was the same in Czechoslovakia. Countries like Ukraine, Lithuania etc. were learning Russian for sure, as they were part of the country.

me too...

even in austria it was taught in school during occupation.

Like i said, it was offered as a language course, but it wasn't mandatory, atleast here in Poland. If it was mandatory then i bet you that a whole ton of people here in Poland would be speaking Russian, which isn't the case.

Also, like Verbose said, if anyone spoke russian, they didn't speak it well, and were most of the time illeterate in it due to different alphabet.

 

[Godwynn]

For reference (European Union Only)

 

[holy king]

why is catalan 1% native, 2 % overall?

also, the gaelic languages are missing...

 

[warpus]

It was offered at the time most likely, but iirc from what my father told me, German and English were much better more popular languages to learn as second language. My father was teaching his friends english for extra money. I can't comment on Bulgaria, but i'm guessing it was the same in Czechoslovakia. Countries like Ukraine, Lithuania etc. were learning Russian for sure, as they were part of the country.

Russian was a mandatory school subject starting from grade 4. I was lucky enough to escape right before I was about to start that grade

Your dad is right, but everyone had to learn Russian. Not everyone had the time/money to go out and learn English or German (as that had to be done outside of school). My dad was an English teacher too, btw.

Having said that, practically nobody in Poland actually spoke Russian. my parents learned it well enough to understand Russian on TV and be able to read Russian books.. but I've actually never heard them ever speak the language.

Russian, as a language, was despised in communist-era Poland, and while everyone had to learn it.. most people hated it and nobody actually spoke it. So I'm not really sure if you can include all of communist-era Poland as "Russian speakers".

edit: I just saw your last post. I'm not sure where you're getting your information from, but Russian was mandatory in communist-era Poland.

 

[Godwynn]

Russian was a mandatory school subject starting from grade 4. I was lucky enough to escape right before I was about to start that grade

Your dad is right, but everyone had to learn Russian. Not everyone had the time/money to go out and learn English or German (as that had to be done outside of school). My dad was an English teacher too, btw.

Having said that, practically nobody in Poland actually spoke Russian. my parents learned it well enough to understand Russian on TV and be able to read Russian books.. but I've actually never heard them ever speak the language.

Russian, as a language, was despised in communist-era Poland, and while everyone had to learn it.. most people hated it and nobody actually spoke it. So I'm not really sure if you can include all of communist-era Poland as "Russian speakers".

edit: I just saw your last post. I'm not sure where you're getting your information from, but Russian was mandatory in communist-era Poland.

English and German were forbidden in schools?