MONITORING DESK
ISLAMABAD: With the aim to help groups of people to keep alive their mother tongues, the United Nations on Friday announced the launch of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
President of the United National General Assembly (UNGA) Csaba Korosi, in this regard, stated preservation of their languages is important not just to them also but to humanity as a whole.
Languages extinction leads to the death of thought
Korosi added that the extinction of each and every language results in the death of tradition, culture, and knowledge, which encompasses the collective thought it bears.
According to data released by the Economic and Social Affairs Department of the UN, out of the world’s more or less 6,700 languages, around 4,000 of them are spoken by indigenous people. Not-so-strict estimates conclude that by the turn of this century, 50 percent of all languages will become extinct.
During the launch proceeding, delegates, which included UN ambassadors and indigenous people, made a case for preservation and protection. On more than one occasion, the speaker in question was an indigenous person as well as the UN ambassador.
Regarding the language extinction, the Philippines’ ambassador to the UN wrote the following tweet:
