Threatened languages

There was a little discussion on CompuServe (FLEFO) as to why it is worth saving dying languages (a subject I rarely think about). Tony Roder, of the Translator’s Home Companion, mentioned reading a favourable review of a book on the subject. The book is Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages, by Mark Abley, a Canadian journalist said to be a good story-teller, who travelled around the world investigating obscure and less obscure languages. Lawyers might find it difficult to speak Boro, a language in Northern India with scarcely any nouns. I see languagehat has already mentioned it, but I was in Verona at the time (he mentions an Amazonian language that was last spoken by a parrot, which was surely in a Larson cartoon).

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