The Last Speakers: The Quest to Save the World's Most Endangered Languages

✍ Scribed by K. David Harrison

• Book ID: 100118730
• Publisher: National Geographic Society
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 624 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 1299565638

✦ Synopsis

Amazon.com Review

From The Last Speakers
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Photo by K. David Harrison

Photo by Kelly J. Richardson

Photo by Chris Rainier

Photo by Chris Rainier

Photo by Gregory Anderson

Photo by Chris Rainier

Photo by Chris Rainier

Photo by Kelly J. Richardson

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From

Parallel to the extinction of biological species in our world, human languages are disappearing one by one. These tongues originated over millennia inside geographically isolated communities for whom modern methods of transportation and communication have proven mixed blessings. Harrison details the work of linguists who are speeding to preserve these tongues for posterity. He travels to Siberia to meet Aunt Marta, one of the last speakers of Tofa, a Turkic tongue. Although a scientist and a rigorous analyst of language grammars and structures, Harrison is particularly intrigued by the personalities of these mostly elderly yet fully engaged people who bravely face the end of what has been a nurturing society. Harrison compellingly details reasons why the rest of the world ought to care about these vanishing languages and what can be done to ensure that they live on despite the irresistible ascendancy of todays rapidly evolving world culture. --Mark Knoblauch