Marcelo Dascal
Endangered Languages


4. Language extinction in the world

Six thousand living languages in the world

...but there were many more

In Meso-America, at the time of contact (77k) between European colonizers

and natives, a wide variety of native languages were spoken.

But they gradually ceased to be spoken, under the dominance of Spanish (61k).

The same is true in Brazil (96k), where the originally spoken languages

disappeared under the dominance of Portuguese (80k).

Although there are still about 150 languages spoken in Brazil, only about 60 of which are documented in some way, we may soon approach a practically monolingual situation in this country (114k).

Remember that it is living languages, living traditions, living cultures, and living peoples who disappear along with the colors in the map.


Chapter 5

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