List of endangered languages

List of endangered languages

A list of endangered languages (with fewer than 1000 speakers or in rapid decline).

In order to judge if a language is endangered, the number of speakers is less important than the age distribution; There are languages in Indonesia reported with as many as two million native speakers alive now, but all of advancing age, with little or no transmission to the young. On the other hand, while there are 30,000 Ladin speakers left, almost all children still learn it as their mother tongue, thus Ladin is not endangered in the 21st century. Similarly, the Hawaiian language has only about 1,000 speakers but it has stabilized at this number, and now has school instruction in the language, from Pūnana Leo immersion preschool classes through college.

While there are somewhere around six or seven thousand languages on Earth today, about half of them have fewer than about 3,000 speakers. Experts predict that even in an optimistic scenario, about half of today's languages will go extinct within the next fifty to one hundred years. Accordingly, the list below presents only a sample of the approximately 3,000 currently endangered languages.

;Africa
*;The Americas;;Central America
*;;North America
*;;South America
*;Asia
*;Australia and Pacific
*
*;Europe
*

References

ee also

*Endangered language
*List of extinct languages
*List of revived languages
*Language families and languages
*Language policy
*The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire

External links

* [http://www.ethnologue.com/nearly_extinct.asp List of more than 500 nearly extinct languages] in SIL's [http://www.ethnologue.com/ Ethnologue Report] (print version 2005: ISBN 1-55671-159-X).
* [http://www.tooyoo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/archive/RedBook/index.html UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages]
* [http://www.nationalgeographic.com/mission/enduringvoices/ National Geographic - Enduring Voices]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать реферат

Look at other dictionaries:

  • List of extinct languages — *List of extinct languages of Africa *List of extinct languages of Asia *List of extinct languages in Central America and the Caribbean *List of extinct languages of Europe *List of extinct languages of North America *List of extinct languages of …   Wikipedia

  • List of endangered languages in Oceania — An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. Oceania (sometimes Oceanica [ Oceanica in… …   Wikipedia

  • List of endangered languages in South America — An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. South America is a continent of the Americas,… …   Wikipedia

  • List of endangered languages in Africa — An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. Africa is the world s second largest and… …   Wikipedia

  • List of endangered languages in Central America — An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language.Central America (Spanish: Centroamérica or… …   Wikipedia

  • List of endangered languages in North America — An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language.North America is a continent in the Earth s… …   Wikipedia

  • List of endangered languages in Asia — An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. Asia is the world s largest and most populous… …   Wikipedia

  • List of endangered languages in Europe — An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. Europe is a peninsular sub continent of the… …   Wikipedia

  • List of Romance languages — The Romance languages include 47 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken in Europe; this language group is a part of the Italic language family.The classification below is largely based on the analysis provided by the Ethnologue. The ISO 639 …   Wikipedia

  • List of indigenous languages in Argentina — This is a list of Indigenous languages that are or were spoken in the present territory of Argentina.Although the official language of Argentina is Spanish, several Indigenous languages are in use. Most are spoken only within their respective… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”