What do Sources C, D and E suggest about the threats facing languages in the world?
SOURCE C
Extract about some languages disappearing and how this could be prevented It is estimated that, if nothing is done, half of 6000 plus languages spoken today will disappear by the end of this century. With the disappearance of unwritten and undocumented languages, humanity would lose not only a cultural wealth but also important ancestral knowledge embedded, in particular, in indigenous languages. However, this process is neither inevitable nor irreversible: wellplanned and implemented language policies can bolster the ongoing efforts of speaker communities to maintain or revitalize their mother tongues and pass them on to younger generations.
SOURCE D
Extract about the number of languages threatened in the world After crunching the numbers using data culled from the Ethnologue, an authoritative source for basic information about the world’s languages, the researchers concluded that 25 percent of the world’s languages are in immediate danger of disappearing forever.
SOURCE E
Extract about how technology can help preserve threatened languages There is now cause for hope. While the dispersal of speech communities across the globe has led to the demise of some languages, technology popularized by globalization is playing an equally important role in their revitalization. Through the internet and mobile communications, people are reconnecting with fellow speakers using digital tools to revive languages on the endangered list … Many speakers of endangered, poorly documented languages have embraced new digital media with excitement. Speakers of previously exclusively oral tongues are turning to the web as a virtual space for languages to live on. Internet technology offers powerful ways for oral traditions and cultural practices to survive, even thrive, among increasingly mobile communities.