Here is an article featured by LiveScience, that mentions about 7,000 languages are at risk for extinction. According to the National Science Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities, preservation of languages may assist in also preserving plants and animals.
A non-profit organization pitted distribution of languages against world biodiversity and found areas with the highest amounts of plants and animals, like in the Amazon and New Guinea, were also where the most languages were spoken.
A citation from the article: "Wherever humans exist, they have established a strong relationship with the land, and with the biodiversity that exists there," said anthropologist and Terralingua President Luisa Maffi. "They have developed a deep knowledge of the plants and animals, the local ecology, as well as a knowledge about how to use and manage the resources to ensure continued sustenance of biodiversity."
Full article: http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/060811_language_diversity.html
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6 comments:
What a fascinating and unexpected corollary! Thanks for sharing that article.
WOW! Now that is interesting... Not surprising, but interesting. I think all things living are much more closely related than we sometimes realize, especially in areas of communication. I'm not the only one who talks to plants while watering them, am I? Do any of you talk to your garden?
I really have to agree w/ micah and ali mae. The article was a very interesting one. I could not believe how the biggest fish in the world had a relationship with language!
Im speech-less
Makes one wonder what a language really is, what it contains and can teach us.
bxll I can't decifer who you are--I'd change your screen name and/or sign your posts.
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