Endangered Languages

The World’s Smallest Languages: When a Language Has Fewer Than 10 Speakers

What happens when a language's entire world can fit into a single room? We explore the most extreme cases of…

5 months ago

The First-Contact Linguist: The Ethical Tightrope of Studying a Previously Uncontacted People’s Language

What are the ethical responsibilities of a linguist who is the first outsider to document a language from a previously…

5 months ago

The Ainu Language: A Linguistic Island in Japan

On the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, a language isolate with no known relatives is fighting for survival. The Ainu…

5 months ago

The Language Catchers: Racing Against Time to Document Endangered Tongues

Every two weeks, a language dies, taking with it a unique way of seeing the world. Meet the "Language Catchers,"…

5 months ago

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