Endangered is a word we usually associate with animal species , but some spoken communication , too , are dying breeds . There are over 6000 languages speak in the domain today , but many are at jeopardy of becoming out and bury . It is estimated that if language decline go along as it has been , one-half of the world ’s languages could be wipe off the map by the end of this century . While some language that are considered imperil still have chiliad of speakers trying to keep them alive , other languages have become confined to single hamlet and still others to single masses .
TheCatalogue of Endangered Languages , or ELCat , is a project that has been set in motion by the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity to evoke sentience of the drastic departure of lyric that is currently taking berth across the globe . While many of these speech are likely past the point of salvation in terms of everyday use , the ELCat and other , similar organizations can still offer ways to preserve these languages so that we can continue to abide by and learn from lingual multifariousness . Check out the mixture in this list of threatened and endangered language — and remember that this tilt just fret the airfoil .
1. Irish Gaelic
Irish Gaelic currently has over 40,000 estimated native verbalizer . There are several communities in Ireland , call Gaeltachts , where Irish is still spoken as the primary lyric . Governmental drive have been in post for many yr need Irish students to find out the Irish terminology and encourage it to be speak . Despite the government ’s attempt , though , this linguistic process is stillclassified as vulnerablein the ELCat .
2. Krymchak
Also spelled Krimchak and known asJudeo - Crimean Tatar , this language is spoken by people in Crimea , a peninsula of Ukraine . It appears that only person born during or before the 1930s have retained smoothness in this linguistic communication , leaving an estimated 200 aboriginal speakers alive when research was conducted in 2007 .
3. Okanagan-Colville
Also known as Nsyilxcən , this is one of C of Native American languages that are considered imperil . speak in the first place in communities in British Columbia , Canada , it is estimated that only about 150 native loudspeaker of this words remain . Thankfully , the ELCat has amassed a significant number of resource , include video , to help preserve this language .
4. Ts’ixa
Ts’ixa , also commonly insure as Ts’exa , is anendangered language of Botswanathat is related to Shua , the language spoken throughout most of key Botswana . Ts’ixa is believed to only be spoken in one village today , the village of Mababe . It is estimated that there are presently less than 200 native speakers of this language , most of them adult . minor in this village often feel more prosperous speaking in Setswana or English , the language they are educate in .
5. Ainu
Ainu is the language of the Ainu people , a aboriginal group in Japan . Because there are only about ten aboriginal speaker remain — all of them elderly members of the community — the speech is critically endanger . ELCat does make reference to many people being inheritance learners of the linguistic communication , but that knowledge is not enough to sustain the use of a language when all of the fluent speakers are pass .
6. Rapa Nui
Many languages are endangered because their populations of speakers are isolated on islands;Rapa Nui is one such nomenclature . moot a threatened language , Rapa Nui is spoken on the famous Easter Island ; as of 2000 there were 3390 aboriginal speakers . Spanish is gradually becoming the more predominant language among the island ’s inhabitants .
7. Yagan
Yagan is an autochthonal oral communication of Chile that purportedly has onlyone remaining native speaker . That is not to say that others are not intimate with the speech , but they are not fluent or regular speaker of it . The ELCat features a video of a woman demonstrating the language in a greeting recorded for the First Congress on the Indigenous Languages of Chile .
8. Saami
Saami is not a single speech , but a house of languages that include at least ten different variations . These languages are also ordinarily referred to as Lappish and are talk in northern regions of Norway , Sweden , Finland , and Russia . While a few of these languages , North SaamiandLule Saami , are estimated to have speakers in the G , most are deliberate critically endangered and have speaker numbers in only the single or double digit . The speakers of these languages that still remain are most unremarkably elders , and the languages are not regularly spoken outside of the home or the circumstance of songs or ceremonies .
