Death of a Language

And the whole earth was of one language,

and of one speech.

Genesis 11:1

We have come a long, long ways from the beginning of the earth when there was only one language for the entire population.  Now there are some 6,000-7,000 languages in the world.  But that richness of communication is being threatened by extinction.  We are losing small group languages at a rate of one every two weeks, according to a recent study.  Some 96% of the world's population speak just 4% of the world's languages.  

In Scotland, for example, A 92-year-old retired engineer in northern Scotland recently died, and so has the dialect that he spoke.  With his death, the dialect of Cromarty fisherfolk  is consigned to a small collection of distorted audio clips.  The Cromarty dialect was directly related to the fishing methods of the people who lived on the shores of the Black Isle peninsula.  During the industrialization of the fishing industry in the 1950's, those distinct methods were lost, and in less than 30 years, the dialect became obsolete.  Now it is extinct.

So what's the big deal about losing a language or two - particularly those that are now spoken by groups with less than a hundred members?  Exactly this:  we not only lose the language, we lose the stories connected to that language, and the cultural knowledge contained in those stories.  We are tied to the past by our memories and knowledge, and when the language disappears, the memories and knowledge pass on  as well.

That is why oral history projects like StoryCorps are so very important, not only here in the United States, but around the world.  Recording the stories in our language, of our culture, is important to the generations who come after us.  What we know, what we remember, what we have been through is significant information for our children and grandchildren.  If you have an important story to share, investigate StoryCorps on the internet, check your local listings for possible oral history projects, or grab a recorder and make your own story archive.