Jai Hind: Proud to be an Indian

The world’ human languages are disappearing about as quickly as species are going extinct. There are almost 6,900 languages spoken in the world. Accodring to the latest report of United Nations 2,500 are now endangered.
This is remarkable because in the last such census conducted in 2001, number of endangered language was only 900. The top three countries facing the loss of the most languages are: 1. India (with 196 endangered languages); 2. The United States (with 192); and Indonesia (with 147).
These figures were released on the eve of International Mother Language Day on February 21, 2009 in the latest Atlas of World’s Languages in Danger of Disappearing unveiled by the UN’s cultural agency Unesco.
There are 199 languages in the world that have less than a dozen speakers, including Karaim with six speakers in Ukraine, and Wichita, spoken by 10 people in Oklahoma.
The last four speakers of Lengilu talk among themselves in Indonesia. 178 other languages are spoken by less than 150 people.

As our fellow blogger The Map Scroll  says:
The site captures something of this poignancy, and the challenge to the identities of endangered language speakers, with a poem by Alitet Nemtushkin, an Evenki poet:

If I forget my native speech,
And the songs that my people sing
What use are my eyes and ears?
What use is my mouth?

If I forget the smell of the earth
And do not serve it well
What use are my hands?
Why am I living in the world?

How can I believe the foolish idea
That my language is weak and poor
If my mother’s last words
Were in Evenki?

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