A Loss for Words

There are about 6,800 spoken languages throughout the world today, but many of them are being crowded into extinction by more dominant languages. The disciples of Jesus wanted to make sure that they didn’t lose a language — the language of prayer.

Manx.

It’s the language of the Isle of Man, and on December 27, 1974, it was officially pronounced dead when its last native speaker died in the village of Cregneash at the age of 97.

Words like coghal, meaning a large chunk of dead flesh in an open wound, or the word jouyl, meaning devil, are now lost and out of use.

There are 6,800 spoken languages today, and experts believe that at least half will be dead by the end of the century. Nicholas Ostler is president of a foundation for endangered languages, and he is concerned about the large number of rare languages that are now in danger of becoming extinct. He points out that languages die for a number of reasons — war, genocide, disease, low birth rates, government policy. But globalization is probably posing the biggest threat of all. As the global village spreads and various economies become more intertwined, many people who speak minority languages will stop using them. For very practical reasons, they will switch to majority...