Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (SOCHUM)

only a handful of speakers, including Abaga with five,
Guramalum with three, and Laua with just one. Thus,
much of the language death expected over the next
decades is predicted to occur to these languages in
Papua New Guinea. 58
Perhaps the most extreme case of language
endangerment today is taking place in Australia.
Linguists estimate that at the time of the British
arrival in Australia at the end of the 18th century, the
indigenous population spoke about 250 languages
across the continent. Three-fifths of those languages
have been completely eliminated, and another eighty
or so will likely die very soon, as there are only older
speakers left. These shocking numbers leave only
twenty, or 8%, or the languages of Australia still viable
today. Most of the language death in Australia has
occurred because of the state policies toward the
Aboriginal population over the past two hundred
years, with numerous instances of forced relocation,
lack of treatment for European diseases, and the
murder of tribes of indigenous peoples. 59
Overall, as the various figures intimate, the problem
of language endangerment is real, severe, and
worsening every year. Dominant European languages
have been expanding throughout the Americas,
Africa, and Asia and the Pacific and, in the process,
have pulled speakers away from local indigenous
languages. Today, linguists estimate that only 5% to
10% of the world’s languages are completely safe from
endangerment and extinction, with the rest either
moribund or weakening. 60 Predictions vary widely for
how rapidly language death is occurring; the lowest
suggests that 25% of the world’s languages will be
extinct within one hundred years, while the highest
puts that number at 90%. Even if we take the standard
projection that half of the world’s languages will die
in the next one hundred years, this still amounts to
the death of one language every two weeks. 61
Should We Care About Language
endangerment?
Reasons Not To Support Language Revitalization Efforts
While the discussion of language endangerment
so far has suggested that this is a serious problem
that must be addressed as soon as possible, there
are a number of politicians, linguistics, and activists
that do not believe that the international community
should take significant action to revive endangered
languages in the near future. the reasons that they
cite range from religious arguments to economic
considerations, and, as evident in the lack of a strong
international response thus far, it is clear that many
of these reasons have been persuasive.
Some people cite religious arguments as reasons
to not intervene in the process of language
endangerment and death. those who hold this
view are generally Christians, and their arguments
rest on the stories of Genesis in the Old testament.
According to the Bible, Adam named all of the
animals and plants that he discovered in the Garden
of Eden through the inspiration of God. Thus, before
the fall of man and the birth of original sin, there
was one “pure” language. Generations later, states
the Bible, humans attempted to build a structure
that would reach the heavens, termed the Tower of
Babel; God considered the tower to be a show of
excessive human pride, so he destroyed the tower,
scattered the people across the face of the earth, and
gave each group a different language so that they
would be unable to communicate and replicate the
Tower of Babel. 62 Because they believe that mankind
spoke one language during the uncorrupted period
of the Garden of eden and that the imposition of the
diversity of languages was a curse for human pride,
some Christians see the endangerment and death of
languages as a positive step on the way to recreating
this ideal part of human history. 63 interestingly, other
religions see linguistic diversity as a positive aspect
of humanity; in Islam, for example, the multitude
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