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Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages
Book Details
Hardcover:
241 pages
Dimensions (in inches): 1.02 x 9.56 x 6.42
Publisher: Oxford University Press; (June 2000)
ISBN: 0195136241
In-Print Editions: Paperback
Contents include a world of diversity, lost worlds, the ecology of language, the
biological wave, the economic wave, why something should be done, sustainable
futures, and more.
DLC: Language obsolescence.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Few people know that nearly 100 native languages once spoken in what is now California are near extinction, or that most of Australia's 250 aboriginal languages have vanished. In fact, at least half of the world's languages may die out in the next century. What has happened to these voices? Should we be alarmed about the disappearance of linguistic diversity?
The authors of Vanishing Voices assert that this trend is far more than simply disturbing. Making explicit the link between language survival and environmental issues, they argue that the extinction of languages is part of the larger picture of near-total collapse of the worldwide ecosystem. Indeed, the authors contend that the struggle to preserve precious environmental resources-such as the rainforest-cannot be separated from the struggle to maintain diverse cultures, and that the causes of language death, like that of ecological destruction, lie at the intersection of ecology and politics.
And while Nettle and Romaine defend the world's endangered languages, they also pay homage to the last speakers of dying tongues, such as Red Thundercloud, a Native American in South Carolina, Ned Mandrell, with whom the Manx language passed away in 1974, and Arthur Bennett, an Australian, the last person to know more than a few words of Mbabaram.
In our languages lies the accumulated knowledge of humanity. Indeed, each
language is a unique window on experience. Vanishing Voices is a call to
preserve this resource, before it is too late.
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