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Preserving endangered languages is a vital part of securing the culture and heritage of our rich human landscape. Language keeps traditions alive, it inspires knowledge and respect about our past and the planet on which we live, and it links communities across borders and beyond time.
Now, a unique partnership between Discovery Communications Inc., the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the UN Works Programme celebrates languages and cultural diversity. Through television programming and website features, you can learn about endangered languages from the few people who still speak them.
Just like endangered animal species, languages are rapidly dying out and need our commitment and interest to keep them alive. Once, there were between 7,000 and 8,000 distinct languages. Now, very few people speak most of the 6,000 known languages around the world. Half of today's languages have fewer than 10,000 speakers and a quarter have fewer than 1,000. Linguists face a race against time to document many of the remaining ones.
Beginning on International Mother Language Day on 21 February, the Discovery Channel will broadcast short television programmes that introduce us to people speaking endangered languages in Scotland, Sweden, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Argentina and India.
On this site, you can meet the people who speak these languages and find out more about their unique cultures.
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not only communicates, it defines culture, nature, history, humanity and ancestry.
