The World's Endangered Languages

United nations, 19 February 2009 - Daily Briefing by the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General. More than 200 languages have recently become extinct.  According to a new atlas launched by UNESCO among the extinct languages are Manx from the Isle of Man, Asax form Tanzania, and Eyaka from Alaska. This is a concern as the death of a language leads to the disappearance of many forms  of cultural heritage.

Related links:
UNESCO:  http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=44605&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_S...

News story:  http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29950&Cr=unesco&Cr1=

View the entire briefing (Real Media, 22 minutes):
http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/pressbriefing/2009/brief090219.rm

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• United Nations
• UN
• Ban Ki-moon
• UN Secretary-General
• UNESCO
• cultural heritage

[overture13]

@IlStudioso no, it isn't. I'm from the Isle of Man and I can speak Manx and know others than can too.

[IlStudioso]

Manx isn't extinct no more, right?

[nodeue]

@meatisdeliciouse Mayan is actually spoken, in many different dialects, by over 5 million people in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize.

[meatisdeliciouse]

What are the Synthetic languages out there. I heard from someone that Klingon is almost concidered a proper language apart from they don't have a few words like plate or something. Isn't there a langauge for star wars and even Lord of the Rings. Does anyone know haow my synthetic languages there out there, not stupid ones like pig latin or stuff on doctor who. Isn't Miyan still spoken by at least 10 people somewhere, I don't know where I get this stuff from but someone is welcome to corect me.

[oksigeno]

Five people commented, one from Zimbabwe and four from USA/ UK. Thank you for descriminate 86% of Humankind speaking English, miss. Don't use the international language, UNESCO recomends it but that is a great tabu, oh God...

[papillonaquatique]

Not so.Sometimes there are valuable reasons for languages to exist.Like the Navajo code talkers or just for the fact that every language is its own little window on the world.Most native american tribes do not write their histories but instead carry on that information in stories in their native language.Once gone there is often no written history of an entire culture.For example Biloxi.Even the settlers knew that the first thing you should strike down in the ability to communicate CONT.

[cosinbrother]

check out my celtic languages links playlist

.....and learn one :-)

[tokuanimecitvguy]

@misteranonymous12345 They can learn whatever language they wanna learn! I was so put off by people teaching us french I didn't take it for GCSE,I dedicated all my efforts into Japanese and I'm gonna avoid France and French territories. So you can get around it if you are very very careful.