Fact file

"There are about 6000 languages spoken in the world today. However, the languages are not evenly divided among the population. Over 90 percent of the world’s 6 billion people speak only about 300 of the languages (Hindi, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese and English are examples of these majority languages). Less than 10 percent of the total population speak the remaining 5,700 or so minority languages. Of these 5,700 minority languages, 3,485 (61 percent) are found in the Asia-Pacific region—the world’s treasure house of languages and cultures."

"Manual for developing Literacy and Adult Education Programmes in Minority Language Communities"
Prepared by Dr. Susan Malone
Published by UNESCO Bangkok

The Big Picture

It is generally agreed that there are about 6000 to 6500 languages spoken across the world today and half of them are under the threat of extinction. The main reason behind this is that speakers of the most of the indigenous tribal languages are switching over to the major languages and also because the speakers are not passing their heritage tongue to their children. This has resulted in the continuous decrease in the number of speakers of these languages. Eventually every year a good number of these languages die silently. With the ever increasing influence of globalisation, such languages are disappearing at a much accelerated pace, making the human kind poorer than ever before in terms of linguistic cultural and social diversity.
Therefore it is much important that steps should be taken at all levels to minimize this global erosion of linguistic, traditional and cultural knowledge from the world. Its a challenge but lets take it up.