Bernardo Guerra Linguistics Blog

 Bernardo Guerra

Mr. Roddy

IHSS

9/7/2021

Endangered Languages

There are around 5,500 total languages spoken today. but in ten years the number will fall significantly, and in one hundred years this number will fall to around 1000 total languages. We are in a time where smaller communities that speak their own languages, are moving into larger societies, speaking languages such as Spanish, English, or Chinese. There are various reasons why this is happening whether it's political, cultural, or economic reasons. This is happening most in tribal communities in Papua New Guinea, many parts of Africa, and natives in the Americas. Just these 3 small groups of people make up around 1800 different languages. Anthropologists have come to the conclusion that a majority of language loss comes from the lack of acceptance of diversity, usually from larger groups to smaller ones. In a majority of cases, it's not just the loss of the language that occurs, but the loss of the entire culture. Lots of anthropologists think of language loss as inevitable. They have come up with solutions to document the language as much as possible by using: videotapes, audiotapes, and written language.

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