ANTHRO 33 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Western Punjabi, Shampoo, Universal Language
Document Summary
Powerful, moving way to illustrate language loss. Not just the language, but an entire way of being in the world is lost when a language dies. Most commonly spoken languages: chinese, spanish, english, arabic, hindi, portuguese, bengali, russian. These are 10% of the world"s languages, but 1/2 of the world speaks them. Endangered languages: will cease to be learned by children in the next 100 yrs if present. Linguistic hotspots: relatively small geographic areas where many languages are spoken. Safe languages: official govt. support and/or large #s of speakers conditions persist. Moribund languages: have ceased to be learned by children and are therefore almost certainly doomed to extinction: moribund: something/someone that is going to die. Dead/extinct languages: no longer spoken by anyone, even if there are written materials or recordings in those languages. Language is intricately entwined with the cultures it is spoken by.
