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THERE were eight of us on the bus home to London’s East End the other
night—between us reading or conversing in Spanish, English, Japanese, a
Chinese language and the Sylheti dialect of Bengali. Language diversity is still
with us.

These languages, though, represent some of those that are most likely to
survive. David Crystal is passionately concerned about the probable extinction
of thousands of others. His Language Death (Cambridge University Press,
£12.95, ISBN 0521653215) opens with a discussion of how many languages
there may be—estimates start at 4000—and which are endangered.

The latter question is deeply political: a language spoken by 500 people may
be healthy if they take pride in it, or if they are isolated and can keep it
uncontaminated by outside influences. The threat to French, by contrast, is
hardly immediate, yet preserving it is a plank of government policy.

So is there a solution? Crystal’s proposed crash programme of recording
threatened languages ought to receive immediate and adequate funding. It’s an
indictment of modern governments that none will do this simply on the basis that
the diversity of languages is interesting.

It is an irony of this book that it is in English. English speakers are
notorious for their defiant ignorance of other languages, yet writing in English
gives Crystal a wide readership and influence.

Crystal does point in passing to a desirable outcome of globalisation. He
estimates that up to three-quarters of the world’s population speaks two or more
languages. Believe me, thinking and dreaming in more than one language enriches
your experience of the world.