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So which countries are doing the best and worst at preserving minority languages?
I personally would put extra emphasis on critically endangered languages to gauge how well a country is preserving its minority languages.
From worst to best (from the above list)
USA: 75
Australia: 42
India: 42
Canada: 32
Indonesia: 30
China: 24
Russia: 23
Papua New Guinea: 21
Mexico: 21
Nepal: 7
but who know maybe some of these countries are have a lot of success recently to revive these languages, and maybe others are purposely putting them out?
Also feel free to bring in other countries, or specific languages/language groups into the thread.
Great thread topic Out of the countries listed above, I would say Canada and the US are doing the best as they seem to have active language revitalization and even revival in some cases of many of its indigenous languages that in some cases are at least a little successful. Australia probably has some as well but my sense is that there aren't as many and they haven't been as successful as those in Canada/US. The rest of the countries listed are either too poor to have the means to protect endangered languages or are too authoritarian and don't want to give minorities any rights and protection and would just rather they assimilate to the mainstream culture.
another interesting question is, is it even good to have such a large amount of languages spoken in a small area? For instance in Russia there are already 35 official languages and India has 32, do all these hundreds of languages really need to be preserved? perhaps only the most prevalent from a language group should be preserved and have the others switch over to that one or two languages of their language family? For instance if Latin languages where going extinct everyone would switch to Spanish to preserve that language family. I for one would love to see as many languages to be preserved, but I also see the impracticality of it as well. Though I would definitely like to have all these languages recorded and cataloged just in case anyone wants to study them in the future and potentially revive them like Manx and Cornish.
From worst to best (from the above list)
USA: 75
Australia: 42
India: 42
Canada: 32
Indonesia: 30
China: 24
Russia: 23
Papua New Guinea: 21
Mexico: 21
Nepal: 7
You need to look at the number of endangered languages in the context of the total number of languages spoken. Taking the English speaking world as an example, the number of indigenous languages spoken in:
another interesting question is, is it even good to have such a large amount of languages spoken in a small area? For instance in Russia there are already 35 official languages and India has 32, do all these hundreds of languages really need to be preserved? perhaps only the most prevalent from a language group should be preserved and have the others switch over to that one or two languages of their language family? For instance if Latin languages where going extinct everyone would switch to Spanish to preserve that language family. I for one would love to see as many languages to be preserved, but I also see the impracticality of it as well. Though I would definitely like to have all these languages recorded and cataloged just in case anyone wants to study them in the future and potentially revive them like Manx and Cornish.
I don't know that there is an optimal number of languages spoken around the world - high or low.
I wonder about the long-term viability of some languages that currently have millions of speakers, but are geographically limited in where they are spoken. Japanese and Korean, for example, are rarely spoken (either as a first or second language) outside of their respective home countries, excepting by first-generation emigrants. Will these "confined" languages eventually whither away and die?
I wonder about the long-term viability of some languages that currently have millions of speakers, but are geographically limited in where they are spoken. Japanese and Korean, for example, are rarely spoken (either as a first or second language) outside of their respective home countries, excepting by first-generation emigrants. Will these "confined" languages eventually whither away and die?
I don't see that happening, maybe places like Sweden, Netherlands or Germany will eventually switch to English but even then I don't see that happening anytime soon.
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Out of the countries listed above, I would say Canada and the US are doing the best as they seem to have active language revitalization and even revival in some cases of many of its indigenous languages that in some cases are at least a little successful. Australia probably has some as well but my sense is that there aren't as many and they haven't been as successful as those in Canada/US. The rest of the countries listed are either too poor to have the means to protect endangered languages or are too authoritarian and don't want to give minorities any rights and protection and would just rather they assimilate to the mainstream culture.
