K. David Harrison

The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge

When Languages Die

The author chronicles his globe-trotting expeditions to meet with the last speakers of vanishing languages and records the speakers' reflections and their efforts to teach the languages to younger generations, in a book with photos of the speakers, graphics and two maps.

The Quest to Save the World's Most Endangered Languages

The Last Speakers

Wade Davis

Catherine Herbert Howell

Captures the rich diversity of human life as it examines more than two hundred ethnic groups, large and small, around the world, through a visual study of beliefs, traditions, lifestyles, and environmental conditions.

A Guide to Cultures

Book of Peoples of the World

Includes information on Australia, calendars, creation myths, directions, epics, fish, folksonomy, genetics, grammar, Himalayan mountains, horse, indigenous people, knowledge, literacy, maps, metaphor, months, naming, nomads, oral traditions, Os (middle Chulym), Papua New Guinea, place names, reindeer, rivers, shamans, sign languages, singing, song, species, taxonomy, units of time, time reckoning, Tofa (Tofalar, Karagas), Tuvan, writing systems, Yukaghir, etc.

David S. Rood

Arienne M. Dwyer

This volume represents part of an unprecedented and still growing effort to advance, coordinate and disseminate the scientific documentation of endangered languages. As the pace of language extinction increases, linguists and native communities are accelerating their efforts to speak, remember, record, analyze and archive as much as possible of our common human heritage that is linguistic diversity. The window of opportunity for documentation is narrower than the actual lifetime of a language, and is now rapidly closing for many languages represented in this volume. The authors of these papers unveil newly collected data from previously poorly known and endangered languages. They organize highly complex linguistic facts­ - paradigms, affixes, vowel patterns­ - while pointing out the theoretically challenging aspects of these. Beyond this, they reflect on the social and human dimensions, discussing particular problems of nostalgia and modernity, memory and forgetting, and obsolescence and ethics, while viewing language as not merely data on a page but as a living creation in the minds and mouths of its speakers.

Lessons from Documented Endangered Languages

Arienne Dwyer

Gregory D. S. Anderson

Tuvan Dictionary

Part travelogue and part scientist's notebook, The Last Speakers is the poignant chronicle of author K. David Harrison's expeditions around the world to meet with last speakers of vanishing languages. The speakers' eloquent reflections and candid photographs reveal little-known lifeways as well as revitalization efforts to teach disappearing languages to younger generations. Thought-provoking and engaging, this unique book illuminates the global language extinction crisis through photos, graphics, interviews, traditional wisdom never before translated into English, and first-person essays that thrillingly convey the adventure of science and exploration.

K. David Harrison

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