Langue Dying Out

According to the new atlas of UNESCO, among the 6,000 languages existing in the world 2,500 of them are about to disappear or have already stopped their existence. About 3,000 languages irrevocably lose their carriers every year. Thus, out of 97 percent of the population of the planet only 4 percent are carriers of the languages. Most likely, by the end of the 21st century dominating languages will supersede 90 percent of all the existing ones.

All these figures testify to globalization, strengthening of communications and mass media. So now UNESCO is very anxious and working very hard to at least be able to support those languages that are ceasing to exist, thus, to support the cultural variety of the planet.

As UNESCO’s Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura said "the preservation of languages, which are a vector of humanity’s intangible heritage, is a priority for the Organization." He added: "As the guardian of cultural diversity, UNESCO must reinforce its action to encourage governments to fight against the decline of thousands of languages. This in no way means weakening dominant languages, but rather to build truly multicultural societies in which nobody feels excluded."

In the UNESCO’s report on viability of world languages it is not given the actual definitions of language, dialects and adverbs. UNESCO’s experts made the atlas of disappearing languages and ranged their viability, considering six groups of factors.

1. Transfer of language from generation to generation

2. Absolute number of carriers

3. A fraction of native speakers in the population

4. Areas of the use of language

5. The use of language in the new environment

6. Availability of teaching materials

"About 97% of the world’s people speak about 4% of the world’s languages; and conversely, about 96% of the world’s languages are spoken by about 3% of the world’s people. Most of the world’s language heterogeneity, then, is under the stewardship of a very small number of people; at least 50%...