Saturday 24 January 2009

Endanĝerigataj Lingvoj


...de la National Post:

Rather different fates have befallen the four members of the Celtic language family native to the island of Great Britain and the Isle of Man:

Cornish went extinct as a community language in the late 18th century, while Ned Maddrell, the last speaker of Manx, died in 1974.

Scots Gaelic has fewer than 60,000 speakers and is in decline.

Welsh, meanwhile, has a healthy community of at least 500,000 speakers...

...Nationalist efforts to restore Irish (also known as Gaelic) to use in daily life, similar to those in Israel, have failed to extend it beyond a community of perhaps 20,000 native speakers. However, generations of Irish students have learned the language at school, and the government intends to make the country a "bilingual society" by 2026.

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