On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 14:57, emijrp <emijrp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
2011/7/11 Milos Rancic <millosh(a)gmail.com>
Note that estimates from the past (and likely
from the present) count
that no language with less than 1M of speakers would survive 2050.
If Wikimedia projects and WMF leave to die 90% (or 80%, or 70%, or 60%) of
current languages in the next 40 years (we will be alive to see it,
probably), then both are failures.
I think (but I am not sure) that I posted this link [1] here a couple
of weeks ago.
Speaking just about languages, the situation is approximately the next:
speakers total speakers number of languages
100M+ 2,514,548,848 9
10M-100M 2,376,900,757 78
1M-10M 950,166,458 303
100k-1M 284,119,716 900
10k-100k 61,223,297 1837
1k-10k 7,823,891 2025
100-999 460,911 1039
10-999 12,664 343
1-9 528 134
sum 6,195,257,070 6,668
So, number of languages with less than 10k is approximately 45%, but
it is around 8M of people in total or 0,0015 of world population. It
is highly likely that that number of languages won't exist in ~100
years. (Some of those below 10k will survive, but some of those above
10k won't.)
To make those languages viable enough to survive -- much more work
than just our is needed. I am sure that 10% of military budgets of the
world countries for one year would preserve all languages, but that's
the other issue. Basically, that's not our failure as Wikimedians, but
failure of our civilization.
[1]
https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=tCwO11tFPLPB-SJafDesypg…