Word Geek | February 4th, 2008
There are about 7000 languages in the world today. In this century, it’s estimated that roughly half will no longer be spoken, that’s about a language every 2 weeks extinguishing from our world.
The Linguists is an Indie Documentary that played at the 2008 Sundance Festival and it focuses on this topic, visit that link to watch the trailer. After watching it, I quickly added this one to my Netflix queue, I can hardly wait.
In this documentary, American linguists K. David Harrison and Gregory Anderson travel to remote regions of Siberia, India and Bolivia to examine the root causes behind the imminent extinction of several languages. Along the way, they face social and economic upheaval, violence and racism as they doggedly pursue their academic goals.
How close to extinction are some of the languages they’re interested in? Take for instance Tofa, there are fewer than 30 fluent speakers in the world today.
And then there’s Native Australian Charlie Mungulda seen below with our linguistic duo. Charlie is the only person alive known to speak the language of Amurdag.
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