Abstract

GARCIA TOBON*, CARLOS. 2008: International Year of Languages. Signo pensam. [online]. 2008, vol.27, n.53, pp.358-368. ISSN 0120-4823.

The UN commissioned UNESCO to devote 2008 to all world languages. Such endeavor, as far as the academic world is concerned (particularly all language schools and faculties), took a compulsory nuance of sorts. Yet, the diagnosis of the world's situation vis-à-vis our concern here, shows the precarious and serious condition this cultural wealth is now going through. Still, no matter how awesome, the preliminary outlines and drafts on some particularities offered by each of the Continents on the future of many languages do give us a wider perspective to better reflect on the problem. The almost weekly disappearance of one language around the world, and the concentration of 80% of the world's population under only 4% of the spoken languages in order to communicate among them is certainly a fact for concern. Thus, the languages themselves, another of the world's resources and wealth, threatened as they are in the midst of a dangerous world in crisis, will find in defending diversity their inexorable flagship.

Keywords : Languages; writing; orality; colonialism; cultural diversity.

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