Thursday, August 28, 2008

Top Ten Endangered Languages


Peter Austin, in The Guardian laments the loss of our languages, highlighting the ten most endangered.

From the story (concerning the Ainu, pictured above)...

The Ainu language is spoken by a small number of old people on the island of Hokkaido in the far north of Japan. They are the original inhabitants of Japan, but were not recognised as a minority group by the Japanese government until this year. The language has very complicated verbs that incorporate a whole sentence's worth of meanings, and it is the vehicle of an extensive oral literature of folk stories and songs. Moves are underway to revive Ainu language and cultural practices.

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