Human knowledge eroded as endangered languages die

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/02/18/MNGABO729L1.DTL

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Of the 426 members of Siberia's isolated Chulym people, only 35 still speak Tuvan, their ancient language, fluently, and they're all older than 50. Everyone else speaks only Russian, according to K. David Harrison, an adventuresome linguist at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Harrison has lived with the Chulym and hopes to preserve their vanishing language.

The Chulym can fully describe a "2-year-old male castrated rideable reindeer" with only the single word chary, and to Harrison, that not only shows how ancient languages differ from their modern counterparts, but is symbolic of a worldwide loss in important cultural diversity.

Harrison was among those who addressed the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco. Of the estimated 7,600 languages known in the world today, half are endangered and could be lost forever within a few decades, he said.

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The Chulym, for example, have a valuable special knowledge of medicinal plants, of meteorology, hunting and gathering, Harrison said, and that knowledge, which they can describe in their own cryptic language, will be lost to biologists if it isn't reclaimed, he said.
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