Just a small outbreak of synchronicity here as I see reported a load of hand-wringing from a UNESCO project:

Some of the data are especially worrying: out of the approximately 6,000 existing languages in the world, more than 200 have become extinct during the last three generations, 538 are critically endangered, 502 severely endangered, 632 definitely endangered and 607 unsafe.

while at the same time we see an illustration of the problems caused by humans speaking multiple languages over in Ireland:

It was discovered that the man every member of the Irish police's rank and file had been looking for - a Mr Prawo Jazdy - wasn't exactly the sort of prized villain whose apprehension leads to an officer winning an award ... "Prawo Jazdy is actually the Polish for driving licence and not the first and surname on the licence," read a letter from June 2007 from an officer working within the Garda's traffic division.

If the mix of living languages causes misunderstandings and probably worse, I'm not sure I buy into the romantic notion of trying to preserve loads more that are falling into disuse. As I recall, Babel was a curse...

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Posted By webmink to WebMink on 2/21/2009 03:16:00 PM