The fall of the tower of Babel.

There are, according to UNESCO over 6,900 living languages today. Unfortunately, however, 2,500 of them are endangered. Both numbers surprised me, and the latter number, shocked me.

A language is more than a set of sounds. It is a way of seeing the world, a way of understanding the world, it is a codification of the world. Each language is a unique perspective. That 2,500 languages should be in danger of being lost, is terribly tragic. If unrecorded, each loss of a language is a permanent loss of a human perspective, of a world view that will never be, again. Each language is also part of the puzzle of how language came to be, to spread and to become so diverse. All languages are intertwined in one complex "evolutionary" whole. To lose one part of the puzzle is to make the whole forever more difficult to understand: it is to impoverish our understanding of what it is to be human.

Many languages are near their end, preserved in the minds of only a few people. One hundred and ninety-nine languages are spoken only by fewer than a dozen people. These include Wichita, spoken by just ten people in Oklahoma and Lengilu, spoken by only four people, in Indonesia. The deaths of a few people, will push these languages to extinction.

One hundred and seventy-eight other languages are spoken by between ten and one hundred and fifty people. Though somewhat safer, it wouldn't take much to extinguish these tongues either. Indeed, the last three generations of mankind has seen the loss of over two hundred languages - including Manx (from the Isle of Man) in 1974.

India stands to lose one hundred and ninety six languages; America, one hundred and ninety two languages and Indonesia, one hundred and forty seven languages.

With the death of the last speaker of these tongues, so too, dies the language, probably forever.

I do not know, as I write, whether efforts are being made to preserve these languages. If not, there should be. Linguists should be sitting down with these last speakers of exotic tongues and recording, in as exquisite detail as possible, each of these languages before they are lost. In some ways, the task is as urgent and as important as the preservation of species - for the loss of a language is as irreplaceable as the loss of a species.

I feel a certain ambivalence about this situation, for I know one cause of it: the spreading of global languages. I love English, and was born into it - but I would not that English bestrode the world and pushed every other language to extinction. That would be too sad. For though I appreciate English for what it is, I also appreciate that there is great beauty in all the languages I have never heard and never known - each is a world of its own and each deserving of conservation.

Philosophically I like diversity - in people, in ideas, in things. I am, actually, very uncomfortable with conformity. What greater conformity could there be than that all spoke one language? It is a hideous thought and I hope it never happens. I would like the world to continue to be a diverse place, with diverse people, thinking diverse thoughts and living in diverse ways. One of these important sources of diversity is the languages they speak. I don't want a world reduced to Mandarin, English, Spanish, French, Japanese and Arabic. That would be awful.

So, I would urge the nations of the world, to appoint sufficient linguists to capture the essence of every language now living, so that none is fully lost, when its last speaker passes on. As for the speakers of exotic tongues: why not teach it to others? Teach it to linguists if no-one else will listen...or better still, have a child, and speak to it in the crib, with the almost dead tongue you speak, so that one more person might live, to pass it on.

I do not want to see a future in which all Man's great diversity has been lost. All should be conserved...for we are all diminished by the loss of each type of diversity. When a language falls silent, Man has forgotten one way to speak about the world. In a sense, one whole world dies with each dead tongue.

Let not Babel fall, but let the world babble on, and be rich in its diversity.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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The Tower of Babel.

I live on the top flour of an apartment block in Singapore. I could, therefore, be said to live in a tower. Today, that tower seemed like the Tower of Babel, for a moment.

You will recall the tale of Babel, and of how the people of the Earth were fated not to be able to speak in a common tongue. Well, today, Fintan came rushing back from the swimming pool, his hair all wet, his body not yet dry, with urgent words on his lips.

His mouth opened before me, as his eyes searched mine and out poured a string of alien sounds.

I looked at him in puzzlement, trying to make sense of what he had said.

He repeated the alien sounds, clearly puzzled by my lack of response to what were clearly urgent words.

Everyone else in the room began to laugh...to Fintan's evident incomprehension: first I wouldn't react, second, everyone else was laughing. He didn't know why.

Then I told him: "Speak to me in English, Fintan."

At last he understood.

"Daddy, Ainan won't get out of the swimming pool!"

My second born son had spoken to me in Malay, in his urgency to be understood, not recalling, for a moment, that I speak very few words of that tongue.

It was a strange moment - and a distancing one. It felt very uncomfortable to see him so close to me, but unable to communicate. An awful remembrance comes to me now, of a South American man I once knew who was divorced from his Japanese wife. He spoke English and Spanish...but after a while his children began to forget their little English - and he was no longer able to communicate with his own children, for he had little Japanese. How terrible that must be. He had lost them more completely than just the divorce achieved. Well, today, for a moment, I felt that unbridgeable distance between father and son that comes when neither speaks the other's tongue.

Yet, there is another lesson here, too. It is that Fintan is becoming comfortable with his second language - so that he sometimes finds himself speaking it, without even realizing that he is doing so. One day, no doubt, he will be fully bilingual. He won't be my only son to be so.

I just hope he remembers to speak to me in English!

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)