Thread by @SimonJGreenhill

Over the next century many of the world's languages will stop being spoken and die.

This is an unprecedented loss of cultural diversity.

Why? We wondered if there were common underlying factors driving this endangerment.

nature.com/articles/s4155…

#linguistics #languages 1/n

Each language has a unique history, and has particular threats and challenges. However, what about global factors? We adapted the analytical approaches that have been applied in conservation biology to characterise current threats to language diversity.
2/n

We gathered data on factors that influence languages: how they're transmitted, how kids learn them, what policies are there about them, as well as the demographic, environmental, socioeconomic and political conditions they're spoken in. 3/n

We brought together an international interdisciplinary team of ecologists, linguistics, biologists, data scientists and mathematicians incl. @macroevoeco @ecologician, @Laserhedvig, @MarcelCardillo, @FelicityMeakins 4/n

We find lots of interesting things:
Languages decline when people shift to another language and dont use their own “mother tongue” with their children, so the greatest predictor of endangerment is the number of first-language speakers of each language. 5/n

... But it is not contact with other local languages that poses the greatest threat: in fact, the more local languages are in contact with a language, the LESS likely it is to be endangered (speakers with lots of languages are used to having lots of languages). 6/n

Landscape features that block movement between people (⛰️🌊) don't endanger languages, but a language is more likely to be endangered if other languages in the same area are also endangered -- i.e. there are regional factors that can threaten many languages in the same area. 7/n

A major factor is roads -- these help longer-range movement between rural areas and villages to larger towns and cities, potentially prompting the adoption of a regional lingua franca, or a shift to widespread languages of governance and commerce. 8/n

Education is another key component: the more years of schooling, as a national average, the greater the level of language endangerment. i.e. more time spent in school, being taught in the dominant national language, can lead to loss of Indigenous language competency. 9/n

... but that's not to say educating minority groups is a bad idea, just that education needs to be multilingual. We urgently need more research into how educational programs can help kids gain the benefits of education without the cost of reduced competency in heritage languages

Our key, heartbreaking finding: without intervention, we predict that language loss could triple in the next forty years. By the end of this century, 1500 languages could cease to be spoken.

This sucks, because losing a language means a loss of a unique history that carries irreplaceable information about human history and diversification. Most importantly, for many people, language symbolises cultural identity and belonging.

Our predictions are grim but it’s not too late to make an impact: many of these endangered languages still have fluent speakers, but we need to act swiftly to support communities to nurture living languages, and encourage children to learn them and use them.

2022 marks the beginning of the UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages, which is a chance to celebrate, revitalise and protect global language diversity. Let's do it.

Full article here: nature.com/articles/s4155…
Message me if you can't access it.

More info:
News & Views from @anggarrgoon: nature.com/articles/s4155…
Blog: ecoevocommunity.nature.com/posts/what-is-…