Summary
4 May 2009
The United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO, says more than a third of the world's six thousand languages are in danger of extinction. Of those two thousand, it says, about two hundred are spoken by only a handful of people.
Reporter:Leonardo Rocha
An Australian Aborigine playing didgeridu
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Report
When a language dies, UNESCO says the world loses valuable cultural heritage - a great deal of the legends, poems and the knowledge gathered by generations is simply lost. In 2008, Alaska's last native speaker of Eyak died, taking the language with her.
Marie Smith Jones praying in Eyak
Chief Marie Smith Jones, praying here for the survival of the Eyaks. She died at the age of eighty-nine, campaigning to save her people's heritage.
UNESCO says government action is needed if the world is to preserve its linguistic diversity. People must be proud to speak their language to ensure it survives.
In the last five years, the governments of Mexico, New Zealand and the United States managed to reverse the trend locally. But UNESCO says the phenomenon of dying languages appears in every region and in very diverse economic conditions.
Leonardo Rocha, 大象传媒
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Vocabulary
- UNESCO
- short for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
- valuable cultural heritage
- features belonging to a particular society, such as traditions, languages, buildings or works of art, which still exist from the past, are unique and therefore have a historical importance
- a great deal of
- many, a lot of
- legends
- old stories presented as history but unlikely to be true
- native speaker of
- someone whose first language, or mother tongue, is
- campaigning
- taking action aimed at achieving a goal
- to preserve its linguistic diversity
- to save the great number of languages currently spoken
- to reverse the trend
- here, to make sure people are encouraged to speak rare languages, so those languages can survive
