Why you should care about endangered languages

1. This is a really dear cause to me, and I had to stop watching with your list of “gones”… I fear there is not enough people learning these languages. People are more interested learning languages they can use, now, or some invented languages, like Klingon or Sindarin.

   I wish I had the courage to go to Sapmi and learn Saami, go to Russia and learn all the Finnish languages there… but – then… what? I too will die one day.

   Someone said that a dying old person is a burning library, and… in this case it’s a library with texts that don’t exist anywhere else…

   • After the “gones” section in the video, I suggest people upload audio and video recordings of people speaking dying languages to http://www.endangeredlanguages.com so that we can hear how these languages sound and not just have text documents or grammar explanations of the language. By keeping a record of these languages, they will not just die with the few who know them. Others can learn them, use them in songs and keep them from extinction.

     • I suppose I need to write a really popular serie of books where everyone speaks some endangered language… (If it only was that easy :-D)

2. Hi!

   I loved this movie!

   I’m involved in a linguistic project on endangered languages myself.

   You can view our work in progress here: http://languagesindanger.eu/

   I’ll need to ask my supervisor – but can we link your movie on the page? 🙂

   Cheers!

   • Mizuu,

     Thanks for posting about your site. The anamporphic map on http://languagesindanger.eu/map/ is great. I had no idea Nigeria had so many languages.

     Please do post this video on your site.

     Here’s the link to a movie I’m making about how an endangered European language saved a boy’s life in World War II: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmh1SLRyA_Q .

     Feel free to post both clips. SUSANNA

3. Excellent!

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