Voices of vanishing worlds: Endangered languages, orality, and cognition

Abstract

Up to half of the world’s 6,500 languages spoken today may be extinct by the end of this century. Most of these endangered languages are oral speech forms, with little if any traditional written literature. If undocumented, these tongues—each representing a unique insight into human cognition and its most powerful defining feature, language—risk disappearing without trace. In this article, I discuss the unique spatial and temporal worlds occupied by communities whose languages are still principally oral. Drawing on examples from the Himalayas, I show how technology is effecting global linguistic diversity and the voices of these vanishing worlds.