Page 2 of 2 <

Vanishing Languages Identified

Discussion Policy

Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

¿ Central South America, where the Kallawaya of Bolivia have for at least 400 years maintained a secret language about medicinal plants.

¿ The Northwest Pacific Plateau, where there is but a single woman who can still speak Siletz Dee-ni, the last of 27 languages once spoken on Oregon's Siletz reservation.

¿ Eastern Siberia, where a high proportion of the 23 known tongues are unrelated to any other languages in the world.

Language can reveal a lot about how a culture organizes information. In the Paraguayan Lengua language, for example, the word "11" means literally "arrived at the foot, one," meaning "counted 10 fingers plus one toe." The word for "20" means "finished the feet."

In Siberia's Nivkh language, each number can be said 26 ways, depending on what is being counted.

About 80 percent of the world's people speak 83 languages, while about 3,500 languages are spoken by just 0.2 percent of the world's population. Attempts to commune with those minorities can turn unintentionally comedic, said Gregory Anderson, co-director of the Enduring Voices project.

Talking to a woman who is one of the 20 remaining Bardi speakers in Australia, Anderson once mispronounced an "r," which resulted in him asking, "What kangaroo are you from?" instead of "What country are you from?"

No interpreter was needed to understand the Bardi laughter that followed.

< 2