Re: Japanese "good", consonant clusters etc.
| From: | Doug Dee <amateurlinguist@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, January 4, 2004, 3:40 |
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In a message dated 1/3/2004 1:36:46 PM Eastern Standard Time,
robertmjung@HOTMAIL.COM writes:
>3. How many langs are endangered?
>4. How many langs are expected to die in the next century?
In _Language Death_, David Crystal notes that estimates of the % of the
world's languages that will die in the next 100 years vary from 25% (which could
happen through the death of all languages currently having < 1,000 speakers) to
80% (which could happen through the death of all languages currently having <
100,000 speakers). He favors 50% as a best estimate.
And he says there are 5,000 - 7,000 languages alive now. So that's about
3,000 extinctions in the next century, using his estimate.
Other sources will give different estimates.
Doug