Dead Languages

Posted on September 20, 2007 in Fact-Dropping

From the point of view of three centuries ago, all this controversy about having English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Chinese existing side by side seems silly. California used to be the most linguistically diverse region in the world. You could go from village to village to village and never hear the same grammar used twice. Thanks to the colonialization followed by the outright subjugation of the land, these languages died with the people who spoke them. Or else the pressure of time spent in American Indian schools led to the abandonment of the tongues.

Now scholars say that one language dies out every fourteen days. Here’s a map.