Euchee, along with Tuvan, Aka and Seri, is one of the many small languages of the world. The Earth’s population of 7 billion people speaks 7,000 languages, however 78% speak the 85 largest languages. Thus while Russian is spoken by 144 million, Tuvan speakers in Russia number just 235,000.
Speaker of the Classics
Yet Tuvan seems robust relative to its frailest counterparts. Tofa, a neighbouring Siberian language, is down to 30 speakers. Languages such as Wintu, a native tongue of California or Amurdak an Aboriginal tongue from Australia’s Northern Territory, retain only a handful of fluent speakers. To think, only four fluent speakers of Euchee remain in Oklahoma…
The dialect of Hydra, Saronic Gulf, Greece
If we are to face facts, language follows power. In the globalized and homogenized era that we increasingly survive within, languages that dominate world communication and commerce hop over geographical boundaries and geo-political borders, pushing small languages into extinction.
The 5 Daily Calls to Prayer, in Arabic
Currently 10 languages dominate the world scene, which means half of the world’s population speak the following:
- Chinese (all forms): 1.213 Billion
- Spanish: 329 Million
- English: 328 Million
- Arabic (all forms): 221 Million
- Hindi: 182 Million
- Bengali: 181 Million
- Portugese: 178 Million
- Russian: 144 Million
- Japanese: 122 Million
- German: 90 Million
Wet Markets, Farrer Park, Singapore
What is most regretable about this crisis of language collapse is the ensuing loss we face in the transfer of traditional knowledge across generations – about medicinal plants, food cultivation, irrigation techniques, navigational systems, seasonal calendars, sociology, philosophy. You see, small languages provide insights into nature because their speakers live in proximity to the animals and plants around them; their talk provide for the explicit distinctions they observe, words reflecting these nuances precisely. For example, Eskimos who hunt on ice (such as the Siberian Yupik) have an incredibly detailed technical terminology for ice conditions, icebergs, ice thickness and movements. For Eskimo hunters, these things are a matter of life and death.
The Language of Parisian Buildings
Each language stands with a proud perserverence; insisting it has still so much to say, till the last tongue speaks it. May they last and last.
A Spaniard, A Greek and Two Mexicans Residing in the UAE.
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