What is your Mother Tongue? How many people do speak that language along with you? Have any idea?
Our world was home for almost 20,000 languages some 8000 years ago. But now, that Number has shrunken to somewhere between 6000-7000 dialects. United nation's report says that one spoken language is being vanished once in every two weeks. This data further gets interesting as it figures out few more things that we might not have dreamt of ever. Out of all these languages, only 3-4% are being spoken by almost 96% of people and more than 96% of languages are used by just 3-4% of the world population!
Let me break it into clear numbers; Assume we have 6500 languages that are being spoken all around the world. And our population is 7 Billion.
97% of people speak just 4% of languages - ie 6.1 Billion people speak just 260 languages. Out of them Mandarin used in China and English used in a number of counties fill the lion's share!
3% of us are speaking the remaining 96% of languages - That's quite interesting. 9 million people have been split across by 6200+ languages! That says that, on an average, a group of every 1451 people have their own dialect/language! Imagine, HOW RICH THEY ARE on this world!!
Of these languages, many are on the verge of extinction: Icelandic, Jedek, Elfadalian, Marshallese, Wintu, Tofa and Aka to name a few. If you are Interested in learning more about these endangering languages, click here.
a number of languages have their speakers in single digit. The end of the people using these languages marks the end of the languages itself. It is not a great news at all to hear! Reasons for this extinction can be many-
GLOBALISATION - English has been accepted as the world language. To get better access to Knowledge, Job and life it has become inevitable to learn world languages. This in turns results in the younger generation totally neglecting their mother tongues
ISOLATION - Certain tribes are located in far-flung areas such as isolated islands and villages located far from the major population. This limits the proliferation of their specific culture and language that causes the extinction in the end.
NATURAL CALAMITIES and POLITICAL CRISIS -When disasters approach a minority group of people by means of natural calamities and political uncertainties, this people and their unique Culture & languages become more vulnerable to attacks.
Image Source - Pixabay , Licence- CC0
Continuous efforts are being made by UN, NGOs and various Governments to preserve these languages. Let's hope they won't disappear forever!
A few words about my Mother Tongue
My mother tongue belongs to the second category; ie, the number of users is less.
The language/dialect that me and my relatives use is much similar to the Dravidian languages Telugu and Tamil. But native speakers of either of these languages find it difficult to understand my Mother Tongue. We use this language to communicate in our home and among our Kins. One peculiarity of my mother tongue is, we have no scripts to write down our thoughts! Languages like Tulu and Kongini which are being used in my country also share the speciality of Having no script with my language. It is a weird thing to be unaware of the name of one's mother tongue. Although I use this language of mine on a daily basis, still I'm not able to cope with the name my parents and relatives suggest - Telungu. The reason being, my mother tongue has nothing to do with that language!
But I can communicate fluently both in Malayalam and Tamil, partially both in English and Hindi. So the total number of languages that I can handle stands on 5. As I did my schooling in Malayalam, I regard it as my official language!
What is your Mother tongue?
Steemit is an international platform and the people using this belong to various parts of the world. Their language, Culture, Way of life etc, everything is different. If you have read this article, would you tell me in comments what is your mother tongue and its peculiarity? I'm eagerly waiting to see the names of different languages that co-exist under the shadow of one big giant - STEEMIT.
