UNESCO stopped updating its atlas of endangered languages
UNESCO's atlas of endangered languages stopped updating in 2017, and the broader atlas meant to replace it is still not live.
category archive
Languages.
Words, meanings and the ways we make ourselves understood.
How Cornish came back after nearly dying out
Cornish had shrunk to a handful of speakers by the 1700s. A 1904 handbook began its revival, and it now has official UK backing under a European charter.
Newborns hear every speech sound, then tune to one language
Perceptual narrowing starts at about six months, vowels first. By a first birthday, a baby tells apart mainly the sounds of the language spoken at home.
Can Japan's Ainu language outlive its last native speakers?
Ainu had about 15,000 speakers in 1870 and 350 by 1917. Japanese policy nearly ended it. Laws, classes, radio and now AI are trying to bring it back.
Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the revival of spoken Hebrew
For nearly 2,000 years Hebrew had no native speakers. Eliezer Ben Yehuda, and children taught in Hebrew-only classes, made it a mother tongue again.
A UK network is testing the old recipe for saving a language
A UK network asks if a language still needs a settled community, home use, job value and state funding. A UNESCO seminar urged cooperation and steady funding.
Two spoken languages leave a mark on the brain's grey matter
A Georgetown study found more grey matter in executive-control regions of Spanish-English speakers. Bilinguals of sign and speech showed no such gain.
Switzerland's fourth language split into five mountain dialects
Switzerland has four national languages. In Graubünden's isolated valleys, Romansh split into five dialects, and it has since lost half its speakers.
Sequoyah's Cherokee syllabary took hold within a few years
Sequoyah built the Cherokee syllabary from the language's own syllables. The Cherokee Nation adopted it in 1825, and literacy reportedly rose fast.