01 2023

Lost for words: fears of ‘catastrophic’ language loss due to rising seas

Climate crisis could be the ‘nail in the coffin’ for half of languages spoken by the end of the century, say linguists, as coastal communities are forced to migrate.

This document is a press article written by Karen McVeigh in the Gardian in January of 2023.

It tackles

the fact that every 40 days a language dies. Indeed, this phenomenon is amplified by the climate crisis. Already in the 1920s half of the indigenous languages were extinct in Australia, in the US, in Africa and in Argentina, so the climate change will be the final nail on the coffin. This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that small linguistic communities are located on islands or on lands where the rise of the water and the rise of the temperatures push them to migrate. Among the most affected areas are Asia and the Pacific, where indigenous languages have flourished the most. One in five of the world's languages are from Pacific. Often people who migrate have to conform to the society they are going to and if they don't speak the same language or have a strong accent they are excluded.

The loss of these languages is a loss of culture, diversity and sometimes a loss of heritage that goes with it.

Yet the text is not totally pessimistic. There is a glimmer of hope since in New Zealand and Hawaii languages that had disappeared have been resurrected.

• La perte des langages constitue un danger

• Perte d’héritage

• Monoculture (Canada exemple)

• Global Warming & Globalisation

• Réchauffement climatique,

• Les solutions