Every 40 days a language dies. This “catastrophic” loss is being amplified by the climate crisis, according to linguists. If nothing is done, conservative estimates suggest that half of all the 7,000 languages currently spoken will be extinct by the end of the century.
Speakers of minority languages have experienced a long history of persecution, with the result that by the 1920s half of all Indigenous languages in Australia, the US, South Africa and Argentina were extinct. The climate crisis is now considered the “final nail in the coffin” for many Indigenous languages and with them, the knowledge they represent.
“Languages are already vulnerable and endangered,” says Anastasia Riehl, the director of the Strathy language unit at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Huge factors are globalisation and migration, as communities move to regions where their language is not spoken or valued, according to Riehl.
“It seems particularly cruel,” she says, that most of the world’s languages are in parts of the world that are growing inhospitable to people.
Vanuatu, a South Pacific island nation measuring 12,189 sq km (4,706 sq miles), has 110 languages, one for each 111 sq km, the highest density of languages on the planet. It is also one of the countries most at risk of sea level rise, she says.
“Many small linguistic communities are on islands and coastlines vulnerable to hurricanes and sea level rise.” Others live on lands where rising temperature threaten traditional farming and fishing practices, prompting migration.
“When climate change comes in, it disrupts communities even more,” says Riehl. “It has a multiplier effect, the final nail in the coffin.”