Language development, endangered or dying languages

Which of the following is NOT necessarily a characteristic of an endangered language?

• The language is regarded as socially inferior and/or has no monolingual speakers.

• Only a few elderly speakers of the language remain alive.

• It is spoken by people who live in isolated areas.

• The language is no longer being taught to children.

96% of the world's 6800 languages are spoken by only 4% of its people.

Is that true or false?

• True

• False

Which of the following is a major cause of language loss?

• War and discrimination

• Population movement, especially urbanization

• Westernization and the rise of global communication

• All of these

One-fourth to one-third of the world's languages lack orthography. What is that?

• Stories and folktales

• A written language

• A distinct culture

• The support of the government of the countries in which they are primarily spoken

Which of the following statements about the world's languages is FALSE?

• It is estimated that about 50 of the world's languages have only a single surviving speaker

• Australia has dozens of endangered languages.

• Half of all the world's languages occur in only eight of its countries.

• Europe has no endangered languages.

According to ethnologue.com's list of nearly extinct languages, these four countries have the greatest number of moribund languages in the Americas. Which country has the most, by twice as many?

• Brazil

• The United States of America

• Canada

• Peru

Creoles and pidgin languages are generally not included when linguists discuss endangered languages. Is this statement true or false?

• True

• False

An example of a language on its way to extinction is Ainu, which once had 19 dialects and now has only about 15 speakers. The Ainu people have been almost completely integrated into the culture and language of which country?

• Japan

• Cameroon

• Australia

• Suriname

Which of the following languages has NOT shown a large increase in the number of people speaking it in the past hundred years?

• Manx

• Hebrew

• Hawaiian

• Irish Gaelic

There is hope for endangered languages. All over the world, scholars and ordinary people are working to preserve both languages and the cultures they represent. Which of the following organizations is creating an online database (with word lists) of all the world's known languages?

• The Rosetta Project.

• UNICEF

• SIL

• UNESCO