Thoughts - Half of world languages might disappear by 2100

In a Wall Street Journal article about a new language recently discovered in Himalayas, the author gives a sad statistic: every two weeks, the last fluent speaker of a language dies. What this means for all of us is that we might lose as many as half of the world languages by the end of this century! Isn't that terrifying and sad?!


In the view of multilingualism, what does it really mean to speak multiple languages? Do we want our children to acquire one of major languages that is spoken by millions around the world anyway? Or do we want our child to carry on the legacy of our heritage? Every family is different. There are parents who see the monolingual culture around them and want their child to break the mold. At the same time, there are parents who just want their first generation immigrant offsprings to be able to communicate with their relatives from overseas.

In both cases, parents see the danger of a majority language to take over. But if we look at the history, we can name many languages of the past that dominated civilizations. Latin is one example. The language was widely spoken by the Romans and many tribes conquered by them. It existed around the beginning of the Common Era, and 18 centuries ago you had to speak Latin if you wanted to get around and get anything done. And although there are no native speakers of this language, lawyers, doctors, and clergy around the world continue to learn it in universities and seminaries even now, in the 21st century. That is how strong is the dominance of Latin.

Looking forward, we don't know what contemporary language will assume the destiny of Latin. Any language is a system, but it has a human factor: if we don't use a language, it ceases to exist. If we continue passing on the legacy, it continues to live. If you imagine yourself as the last native speaker of your tongue, I bet you would do your best to teach at least the basics to at least one person.

Greg and I were reminiscing about the good old times when we spoke German at home all the time. This conversation prompted him to pick up Herman Hesse after a couple of years of no German practice and start learning new words again. So, hopefully, with his efforts and with help of 80 million other non-native speakers of German, as well as 100 million native speakers around the world, German will persevere.

At the end, every language is a projection of our reality. I hope that other polyglots out there will consider passing on their foreign language knowledge to others, so that by the year 2100 we don't end up losing a couple of thousands of unique views on our world.