More or Less: Behind the Stats   /     Does a language die every two weeks?

Description

Researchers have catalogued 7,164 languages spoken around the world - some are used daily by billions. Half are spoken by less than 8000 people. The death of a language, when it’s no longer spoken as a first language by anyone living is a deeply significant moment in the cultural life of communities. Multiple sources including the UN and National Geographic magazine have claimed this happens every two weeks. But we have reasons to be suspicious about that statistic. Gary Simons, executive editor of the Ethnologue language catalogue, explains where this idea came from.Presenter: Kate Lamble Producer: Debbie Richford Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: Nigel Appleton Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Subtitle
Languages are disappearing. We investigate claims of how often this happens.
Duration
589
Publishing date
2024-08-03 05:00
Link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0jfpsb0
Contributors
  BBC Radio 4
author  
Enclosures
http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/6/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download/proto/http/vpid/p0jfpfw0.mp3
audio/mpeg