***** Parallel extinction risk and global distribution of languages and species WILLIAM J. SUTHERLAND Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK
Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to W.J.S. (w.sutherland at uea.ac.uk).
There are global threats to biodiversity with current extinction rates well above background levels. Although less well publicized, numerous human languages have also become extinct, and others are threatened with extinction. However, estimates of the number of threatened languages vary considerably owing to the wide range of criteria used. For example, languages have been classified as threatened if the number of speakers is less than 100, 500, 1,000, 10,000, 20,000 or 100,000 (ref. 3). Here I show, by applying internationally agreed criteria for classifying species extinction risk, that languages are more threatened than birds or mammals. Rare languages are more likely to show evidence of decline than commoner ones. Areas with high language diversity also have high bird and mammal diversity and all three show similar relationships to area, latitude, area of forest and, for languages and birds, maximum altitude. The time of human settlement has little effect on current language diversity. Although similar factors explain the diversity of languages and biodiversity, the factors explaining extinction risk for birds and mammals (high altitude, high human densities and insularity) do not explain the numbers of endangered languages.
<http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v423/n6937/abs/nature01607_fs.html> *****
***** Extinction fear for languages By Magdalena Wallmont CNN Thursday, May 22, 2003 Posted: 1349 GMT ( 9:49 PM HKT)
LONDON, England (CNN) -- New research on human communication suggests that languages may be more threatened by extinction than previously thought.
Using the same standards applied to bird and mammal populations, professor Bill Sutherland of the University of East Anglia in England examined the threat to the world's 6,800 languages.
His findings -- that nearly 1,700 languages are either endangered, critically endangered or vulnerable -- are reported in the May 15 edition of the science journal, Nature.
"The threats to birds and mammals are well known, but it turns out that languages are far more threatened," Sutherland says.
About 27 percent of the world's languages are threatened, compared to about 9 percent of the bird population, his study shows.
Sutherland also notes similarities in areas where languages and birds were endangered or extinct.
"Countries with the most endangered and extinct languages also have more endangered and extinct birds," he writes in Nature.
Likewise, "areas with high language diversity also have high bird and mammal diversity, and all three show similar relationships to area, latitude (and) area of forest."
Sutherland notes there are 357 languages with fewer than 50 speakers each.
Some of them include Birale in Ethiopia, with 20 speakers; Saami in Sweden, with 50 speakers; and Alawa in Australia with about 20 speakers, according to the book "Ethnologue: Languages of the World," edited by Barbara F. Grimes.
"As languages become rare they become less attractive for people to use and speak," Sutherland notes.
According to the England-based Foundation for Endangered Languages, 83 percent of the world's languages are restricted to single countries, making them more vulnerable to the policies of a single government.
"At the other end of the scale, 10 major languages are the mother tongues of almost half of the world's population," the foundation notes on its Web site.
The foundation attributes the decline and total disappearance of some languages to urbanization, Westernization and the growth of global communications, which "diminish the self-sufficiency of small and traditional communities."
"As each language dies out, science loses a source of data that carry messages in anthropology and prehistory," the foundation says....
<http://edition.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/05/22/extinct.language/> ****
For a view unsympathetic to linguistic conservationists, see David Berreby, "Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the Two Part Ways," May 27, 2003, <http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/27/science/27ESSA.html>. -- Yoshie
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