Language diversity and effectively cultural diversity,are part of world humanistic heritage. Contemporary concepts of globalisation and linguistic imperialism present a menace to many minority languages,and therefore human cultural diversity. What should be done to preserve such common heritage? and what people have to do to save many endangered languages throughout the world?
An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use. When it loses all its native speakers , the language then is dead or extinct.
David Crystal, in his book " Language Death " states that: " To say that a language is dead, is like saying that a person is dead, It will be no other way, for languages have no existence without people."
As an example of endangered languages that are in the way of extinction , we have the Latin language, which is nowadays used in very limited situations, though it was the predominant language over the world during the Roman Empire.
Among the languages that recently died, as Crystal suggests: Kasabe language. A language spoken by a speech community in Cameroon, which died after the death of its last native speaker in 1994. Also Ubykh, a language used by some groups in the Caucasian region, died in 1992 after the death of its last speaker.
Due to the overwhelming political, economic and cultural influence of the world superpowers, particularly the American hyper power, English is taking over the rest of world languages. Consequently, minority languages are the most likely to disappear in the recent future.
According to linguist M.Krauss, 90% of the world's about 7000 languages are endangered, and 50% of them will die by the end of this century.
To prevent such surprising previsions, people over the world need to work out of setting strategies and programs at the aim of saving minority languages.
The United Nations organisation, U.N.E.S.C.O, claims that, financial aids and material support are set up to help many endangered minority languages worldwide. A program that will save some of what remains of the minority languages if it is well executed.
Minority languages native speakers also have to take on the task of preserving their languages by promoting programs that help people to like, adopt and eventually enhance their language.
In a mostly globalised world, minority languages rescue is a human task. People over the world have to work out for reducing the impacts of contemporary globalisation on many endangered languages throughout the world, a world that tends to become a " Global Village ".
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