In an episode of “Lexicon Valley” released yesterday, Mike Vuolo and Bob Garfield tackle the subject of endangered languages.
Titled “Should We Care When a Language Dies?” the audio show includes parts of an interview with David Harrison, Director of Research at the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. Harrison discusses the three areas of knowledge that are lost when a language dies: cultural, scientific and linguistic.
They also discuss the Endangered Languages Project recently launched as a Google project (see post on this blog).
Among the examples of endangered languages discussed are Urarina (ura), a language with the very rare structure OVS (object-verb-subject), and Bo or Aka-Bo (akm), which went silent two years ago.
Living Languages 