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More silent spring...?

May 14, 2003

The evocative sounds of some of the world's most remote places - rare birdsong and human languages - are both under threat. New research from the University of East Anglia compares these threats for the first time.

Professor Bill Sutherland, of UEA's Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, has applied to languages the same internationally agreed criteria used to ascertain threats to birds and mammals.

His findings are reported in this week's (May 15) edition of the science journal Nature.

"There are a lot of claims about how serious an issue the threat to languages is, but the way it is measured can be arbitrary. It seemed sensible to view the problem in the way that conservation biologists examine threats to species," said Prof Sutherland.

"The threats to birds and mammals are well known but it turns out that languages are far more threatened. For example there are 357 languages with under 50 speakers. Furthermore rare languages are more likely to show evidence of decline than commoner ones."

Areas with high language diversity also have high bird and mammal diversity, says Prof Sutherland. "Countries with large numbers of languages are those with the most forest, are nearer the tropics, and with mountain ranges. The same factors affect the number of bird species.

"Interestingly, too, the time of human settlement has little effect on current language diversity," he said. "Best estimates, using genetic and archaeological data, is that Asia has been settled by modern humans for 100,000 years. Archaeological evidence shows that humans have lived in Vanuatu, in the Pacific, for just 3500 years, yet it has 110 languages."

The most likely reasons for this are the fact that languages can evolve quickly (Nicaraguan sign language is now recognised as a language but has only existed since 1979) and are in a state of continual flux.

East Anglia, University of

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