My third weblog is about Global Language Hotspots. Language hotspots are small geographic areas of high diversity grouped with endangered languages. This website defines five categories of language endangerment and rates the various language hotspots around the world according to the appropriate category.
The website defines and expresses the concern of language endangerment. “A language dies when the last speaker of that language dies, and the world loses the knowledge that was contained in that language. Even before the last speaker dies, a language is useless when it no longer defines a community and cannot be used to communicate meaning.”
I think the purpose of this website is to educate people about language extinction and become aware of how important language is to culture. One section has an interactive map of all the language hotspots in the world. When you click on a specific hot spot area for example the Northwest Pacific Plateau, it will give you information on the area and rank the category of language endangerment.
This website was also created by language researchers who go on expeditions to high risk language endangerment areas and help to create language revitalization programs and make interview recordings with the elders.
This website had a lot of information and statistics about world language endangerment and show the reality of how quickly languages are being lost forever.