num_pages: 336
description: In Spoken Here, Mark Abley takes us on a world tour from the Arctic Circle to Oklahoma to Australia in a fervent quest to document some of the world's most endangered languages. His mission is urgent: Of the six thousand languages spoken in the world today, only six hundred may survive into the next century. Abley visits the exotic and frequently remote locales that are home to fading languages and constructs engaging and entertaining portraits of some of the last living speakers of these tongues. Throughout this exhilarating travelogue, he points out that the same forces that put biological species at risk -- development, globalization, loss of habitat -- are also threatening human languages, and with them, something very basic about their speakers' cultures.
language: English
title: Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages
titlecomplete: Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages
genres: Linguistics, Language, History, Cultural, Geography, Travel, Science, Nonfiction, Social Science, Anthropology
ratings_count: 692
awards: awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction
publisher: Mariner Books