We have to break down the apathy because of the TV, where nothing is important. We have to make our children realize that we are somebody. We are not carbon copies of what is on TV. . . . Zionists understood the power of language to define a people and a way of understanding the world when they made Hebrew the first language of the new Jewish state, Israel, in 1948. If their languages go, Native Americans won't be the only ones to lose.
Every language looks at the world . . .
Every one that is lost, is lost. Losing the world's languages Michael E. Krauss , professor of linguistics at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and director of the Alaska Native Language Center, worries about the fragile predicament of endangered languages throughout the world. He estimates that of 6,000 languages spoken worldwide today, only about 300, or 5 percent, won't be extinct or on the road to extinction in the next 100 years. Dooming languages, he said, are advancements in telecommunication and travel. In the United States, many Native American languages have survived the devastating effects of disease, war and federal policy on tribes during the past two centuries.