Endangered Languages

Half the world’s 7,000 languages may disappear by the end of this century. If that doesn’t alarm you, it should. Embedded in each language is a reflection of life as lived by its speakers, over thousands of years. When a language disappears, all that is lost. As the world grows more connected, and as dominant cultures push their own languages for wider use – think English, Chinese and Arabic, for starters -- ever more languages are disappearing, at an accelerating rate. The good news is that linguists are on it, like this episode’s guest Laura Welcher, who has directed the Long Now Foundation’s Rosetta Project in San Francisco.