{"id":905,"date":"2009-02-26T21:25:12","date_gmt":"2009-02-26T20:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=905"},"modified":"2009-02-26T21:25:12","modified_gmt":"2009-02-26T20:25:12","slug":"when-is-a-language-extinct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=905","title":{"rendered":"When is a language extinct?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The recent publication of UNESCO\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/portal.unesco.org\/en\/ev.php-URL_ID=44605&#038;URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&#038;URL_SECTION=201.html\"><em>Atlas of the World\u2019s Languages in Danger<\/em><\/a> has generated quite a few new stories and discussion.<\/p>\n<p>The Atlas has a list of 2,500 endangered languages ranked according to five different levels: unsafe (607), definitely endangered (632), severely endangered (502), critically endangered (538) and extinct (200). Of these languages, 199 have fewer than 10 speakers, and 178 have between 10 and 50 speakers. The Atlas is apparently available online, although I can only find information about <a href=\"http:\/\/portal.unesco.org\/ci\/en\/ev.php-URL_ID=8048&#038;URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&#038;URL_SECTION=201.html\">endangered languages in Africa<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Among the extinct languages it mentions Manx and Cornish, which has stirred up a lot of comment, especially among those who speak these languages and are learning them. For example, the website iomtoday.co.im tells us that the \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/www.iomtoday.co.im\/news\/39Manx-language-is-very-much.5005402.jp\">Manx language is very much alive<\/a>\u2019 and there are articles on <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/europe\/isle_of_man\/7901763.stm\">Manx<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/england\/cornwall\/7900972.stm\">Cornish<\/a> on the BBC site.<\/p>\n<p>The comments on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iomtoday.co.im\/\">iomtoday<\/a> site are interesting and seem to agree that Manx is nobody\u2019s first language, which I believe is true. One commenter points out that Manx is dead because \u201cthere are no longer any monoglot Manx speakers, or even speakers with Manx as a first language\u201d. I\u2019m not sure why it\u2019s essential for there to be monoglot speakers of a language for it to be considered living. There are very few, if any, monoglot speakers of Welsh, Irish or Scottish Gaelic over the age of 5 or so, but there are plenty of people who speak them as their first language.<\/p>\n<p>My dissertation will be a study of the revival of Manx, and this will give me a better idea of the current state of the language. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The recent publication of UNESCO\u2019s Atlas of the World\u2019s Languages in Danger has generated quite a few new stories and discussion. The Atlas has a list of 2,500 endangered languages ranked according to five different levels: unsafe (607), definitely endangered (632), severely endangered (502), critically endangered (538) and extinct (200). Of these languages, 199 have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,103,127,10,23,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cornish","category-endangered-languages","category-irish","category-language","category-manx","category-scottish-gaelic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}