Thursday, April 12, 2007

Fifty Percent of World's Languages Have Been Lost in Last Six Years

If you're as concerned as I am about the environment and how it impacts your health, chances are good you might've missed a huge cultural shift.

This absolutely fascinating video lecture by a very articulate Harvard anthropologist tells you how we are losing our heritage.

By Proferssor Davis' estimate, about half of the world's 6,000 languages are disappearing, as they are no longer being taught to children, meaning the origins of our world, ethnicity and spiritual life -- what he calls the enthnosphere -- are vanishing.

With language serving as "a watershed of thought" -- not just uncountable sets of grammatical rules keen to trip us up when we least expect it -- among various populations around the world, languages will die unless something happens soon to change it.

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