By Sarah-Claire Jordan Computers and endangered languages is probably not the first combination to come to mind when you’re thinking about things that work well together. Using a computer does involve language, and computers have their own languages or “codes” used to build programs and applications, but otherwise the two don’t seem like a likely […]
Estimates may vary, but it is commonly accepted that between 50% and 90% of the world’s ~7,000 languages will disappear by the end of the 21st century without substantial preservation efforts. Many of these languages do not have a written form. On average, a language dies or goes extinct every two weeks when its […]
Newcomers to the northwestern Arizona highlands are surprised by a smattering of snow that comes to interrupt the usual stifling dryness. Amid this dryness, dozens of Indian bands or scattered tribes are regrouped in reservations. The focus here is the Yavapai “people of the sun” who reside in Camp Verde, Clarkdale, and other locations belonging […]
Any image of the Ice Age gives us a wizened earth, barren and stony, abdicated to the powerful and relentless freezing of the poles. A few of these glaciers, silently introduced between high and mighty cliffs where lies modern day Scandinavia, would alter the landscape for millenniums to come. Amidst the Norweigan fjords, however, one […]
Archipelagos reserve interesting anthropological surprises. One such surprise is the existence of a distinct minority group living in Japan, a society known for its hegemony. They are called Ainu, number around 15,000 and occupy, for the most part, Hokkaido, a northern island whose luminous plains cut by volcanic mountains becomes a shadowed white wilderness when […]
Traveling in Brazil along the 15th parallel is no easy business. From the coastline, the country’s capital, Brasilia, is a whole 24 hours in bus. Add another 10 hours and the bus may reach the rude landscape surrounding the bustling Rondonópolis in Brazil’s Mato Grosso region. This is a backwoods more laden with yellowing grasses […]
There are approximately 6,912 living languages in the world today. Most languages belong to larger language groups or families, which is a group of similar or related languages that developed from a common ancestor, referred to as protolanguage (“proto” means “early” in Greek). Let’s take a look at a few major language groups, including an […]
