According to UNESCO, 97% of world population speaks only 4% of still existent languages. The remaining 96% of languages could become even more obsolete and quite disappear before the end of XXI century.
I’m writing these notes in English, which is not my mother tongue, but has become the communication language among people of different idioms.
In Switzerland it’s common to communicate among own fellow-citizens who belong to a different group of national language in English as well.
Two centuries ago French was the representative language of diplomacy and was currently spoken by nobles and intellectuals in all countries.
Other languages have had different fortunes; many have always been spoken in limited areas...
Nevertheless diversity is always a patrimony.
I have always felt a great respect for the meaning of words, their origin, their development, so I feel melancholy when I realize as languages are flattened down, day after day , losing their rich peculiarity, their nuances, to become a basic essential vocabulary composed of the strictly necessary world.
Adjectives and nouns are going to die with oblivion little by little and they are not necessarily substituted by anything new.
I’d like knowing all the languages to identify their structure and their richness; they speak to us about our own history.
Let’s consider Estonian language, it belongs to the Finnic branch of Finno-Ugric group of languages. It’s rather similar to the language they speak in Finland, but it’s totally different from all the languages of the other countries, which surround small Estonia.
Nowadays, all over the world Estonian is spoken by a little more than 1.000.000 people.
Estonian, with its exotic vowel-rich words and almost song-like intonation is arguably one of the world's most beautiful-sounding languages.
But who of us, besides Estonians, has ever thought of the real existence of this language?
In Syria, not far from Damascus, there is a small village called Maalula, which is the only village in the world where people still speak currently and fluently Aramaic.
How many people will still speak Aramaic in 50 or 100 years?
Speaking in a strictly metaphorical sense, I don’t think that the so called “Babel Tower “ episode should be considered a punishment, on the opposite I see the different development and history of languages as a valuable gift.
Being different, without being antagonists is a form of intellectual richness.