Death of Languages
This year, we've seen many reports about the inexplicable drop in bee population and what that means in terms of agricultural devastation. Same thing with many garden variety song birds. Just to pile up on the world of "loss," we now may learn that many of the earth's languages are in danger of disappearing forever, at least as spoken currency even within a small group of folks. According to the report of the National Geographic Society, "Every 14 days a language dies. By 2100, more than half of the more than 7,000 languages spoken on Earth—many of them never yet recorded—will likely disappear, taking with them a wealth of knowledge about history, culture, the natural environment, and how the human brain works."Losing stuff is never fun, but when we start talking about such fundamental things like bees, birds, and languages, don't you think the collective world mind should be wondering, "What are we doing wrong?"
posted by fromclay at 9/18/2007 04:22:00 PM
1 Comments:
A good question. What are we doing wrong, besides using pesticides and making bees travel hundreds and thousands of miles in order to pollinate an orchard or farm. The bees left because they were not treated properly, and when humans learn that nature has its own limits on human stupidity, perhaps things will change. As to the languages dying out, that is part of the evolution of civilization, I guess. How may thousands of languages have died out over the course of time? Yet we communicate as we can. In 500 years, or 5000 years, what will the world look like? Will there be one common language? Will humanity have learned anything from past mistakes? Will we be here at all?
Allah knows the truth.
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