One of my pet interests is in languages, linguistics and the role of language in thought, knowledge and consequently philosophy.

There is a staggering statistic that most people are unaware of and that is that on average one language dies every 2 weeks. This decimation of microsocial linguistics is truly tragic as each language (no matter how obscure and premodern) contains axiomatic and idiomatic terms that are culturally specific and unique.  Take the Monchak language of western Mongolia that will be dead within a generation, this language has no word for grandchild but several for goats with different colours or markings. Why is this important, wouldnt fewer languages make cross-cultural communication easier?

The problem is this: with each language that dies an idea, or a way of formulating an idea, a way of percieving the world, in other words a nugget of knowledge is lost.

And this is important to a variety of human endeavours including science and medicine. Today pharmacologists searching for new drugs to combat rapidly evolving bacteria and viral diseases are looking evermore at the traditional herbal and medical traditions of remote pre-modern cultures. Different ways of looking at the world, and of harnessing its resources that 50 years ago would have been condemned and ignored as primitive and of little value, today is being reevaulated for the benefit of future generations. With each language that dies out, or goes unrecorded, snippets of information and ideas may be lost.

The National Geographic Enduring Voices Project are sponsoring and collaborating with the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. Please take a look at their website in order to at least get a better idea of why this is an important conservation project.