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September 2010: Researchers Dave Harmon and Jonathan Loh publish an Index of Linguistic Diversity
Linguistic diversity in the world is declining. Fact. Yet one quickly finds out how scarce reliable data and consensus are when it comes to providing figures on such a trend.
Among the various publications brought out on the subject every now and then, we’d like to put forward this Index of Linguistic Diversity, elaborated by linguists Dave Harmon and Jonathan Loh. According to both of them, their index stands as the largest data base on language demography ever.
In total, over 150 pages of script, figures, charts and graphs, and an abundant bibliography bring a clear overview of the issue, and expose the threat bearing upon linguistic diversity under a very practical light.
The authors worked on a representative sampling frame of 1500 languages. They listed and compared the numbers of speakers of different language groups at different geographic scales, over a period of 40 years.
Among the data and figures that drew our attention:
– Linguistic diversity has suffered an overall decline of 20% between 1970 and 2005
– Indigenous languages have suffered a 60% drop in the Americas, 30% in the Pacific (including Australia), and nearly 20% in Africa.
The Index of Linguistic Diversity is available for download on the LD&C website (free).