Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages by Mark Albey

Wherever I traveled, I tried to listen to the actual speaker of languages under threat - the loyalist of minority cultures. How do people who know their language is endangered bear the weight of such knowledge? I wanted to see how far their defiance could stretch, and how easily resignation could take hold. I wanted to learn what step can be taken to sustain and strengthen a threatened tongue Above all, I wanted to test my own hunch that the looming extinction of o many languages marks a decisive moment in human history - a turning away from vocal diversity in favor of what optimists see as a global soul and others as a soulless monoculture. In the end, should anybody care that thousands of languages are at risk?

That's the central question I will attempt to answer in this book. But I have a confession to make. I work as a journalist, poet, and editor; I am not a professional linguist. Indeed, my knowledge of the entire discipline o linguistic is patchy and often cursory. These pages do not touch on constructional homonymity and depth-first parsers; such matters lie beyond my frame of reference. My defense is one of analogy. You don't have to be a theologian to talk of God; you don't have to be a veterinarian to describe cats. Besides, this book is not just about threatened languages but about the people who speak them. I beg the forgiveness of linguists for trespassing on their territory and perpetrating whatever blunders have found a home in these pages - and I would gently remind them that their own voices are unlikely to be heard on the subject unless they speak out in terms that are lucid, intelligible, and free from jargon.