Language Endangerment Quiz

Language Endangerment: Key Facts and Figures

• An endangered language is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages.
• Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead language".
• The first step towards language death is potential endangerment.
• The majority of linguists in the early twentieth century refrained from making estimates of the total number of languages in the world.
• Estimates vary depending on the extent and means of the research undertaken, and the definition of a distinct language and the current state of knowledge of remote and isolated language communities.
• Ethnologue's 2005 count of languages in its database, excluding duplicates in different countries, was 6,912, of which 32.8% (2,269) were in Asia, and 30.3% (2,092) in Africa.
• Almost all of the study of language endangerment has been with spoken languages.
• UNESCO operates with four levels of language endangerment between "safe" (not endangered) and "extinct" (no living speakers), based on intergenerational transfer.
• Language endangerment affects both the languages themselves and the people that speak them.
• Losing a language may also have political consequences as some countries confer different political statuses or privileges on minority ethnic groups, often defining ethnicity in terms of language.
• Once a language is determined to be endangered, there are three steps that can be taken in order to stabilize or rescue the language: language documentation, language revitalization, and language maintenance.
• UNESCO seeks to prevent language extinction by promoting and supporting the language in education, culture, communication and information, and science.