Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages - Softcover

Abley, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0618565833 ISBN 13: 9780618565832

Publisher: Harper Paperbacks, 2005

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

"Gracefully written, funny, and frequently heartbreaking."

From the Publisher:

One of the most critically-acclaimed non-fiction titles of 2004, both fascinating and moving, award-winning journalist Mark Abley's story of his travels to visit the world's dying and threatened languages and the people who speak them.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0618565833
• ISBN 13: 9780618565832
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 322