It is believed that half or more of the languages spoken on Earth will be extinct within a century. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which monitors endangered languages, says that "with each vanishing language, an irreplaceable element of human thought in its multiform variations is lost forever." As the world becomes more interconnected, many languages, as well as the culture captured within them, may be lost.
There is a strong link between language and cultural identity. In nineteenth-century Japan, attempts to assimilate the Ainu people into Japanese culture included banning their language; some indigenous languages in both North America and Australia suffered the same fate. Many of those languages are lost or dying. With loss of language comes loss of links to the past and feelings of belonging to a community, which research has linked to mental health. One study of Aboriginal communities found that youth suicide rates dropped to almost zero when the residents had conversational knowledge of native languages.
One problem endangered languages face is lack of official recognition. Residents of a country are expected to know its official language or languages, but many countries do little to recognize minority regional languages. Take Basque, a language spoken in both Spain and France. In France, only French is recognized as an official language. In Spain, the constitution allows for regional recognition of official languages besides Spanish, so in Basque-speaking parts of the country, both Spanish and Basque are official languages. It is not surprising, therefore, that UNESCO cites Basque as "vulnerable" in Spain but "critically endangered" in France.
Consider, in contrast, the case of Finnish. This tongue is not endangered, even though Finland was ruled from the Middle Ages until 1917 by first Sweden and then Russia and, during this period, Swedish was used as the language of administration and government. In 1919, a newly independent Finland constitutionally adopted both Finnish and Swedish as official languages, legally recognizing its native language as important to its burgeoning national identity. As of 2013, Finnish was spoken by 89 percent of the population of Finland.
In order to preserve languages that will otherwise be lost, linguists have proposed creating a database of endangered languages. But how would an academic repository serve the often marginalized groups that speak such languages? While directed toward a noble goal, this project would fail to address the issue of language’s critical role in preserving a sense of cultural identity.