A very interesting item from BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about endangered languages. At the moment, some 7,000 languages are spoken globally but some predict that number will shrink in the next few decades.
Questions such as “what makes a language ‘living’?”, and “should we conserve the endangered ones?” are discussed in the piece, “The death of language?”
• Jim Dickson is a director of WorldAccent Translation, London
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Concerning the campaign to save endangered and dying languages, you interested in the contribution, made by the World Esperanto Association, to UNESCO's campaign.
The commitment was made, by the World Esperanto Association at the United Nations' Geneva HQ in September.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eR7vD9kChBA&feature=related
Your readers may be interested in http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU Professor Piron was a translator with the United Nations in Geneva.
A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net