Andean Aymara

In a recent exchange about the death of the last speaker of Bo, Lyle Campbell summarized very well the current status of Amerind languages.

He writes that when the first Europeans arrived, there were some 280 languages or so in the US which could be divided into 51 families (incl. isolates). Currently some 150 survive and they are all endangered.

As for a pan-American perspective:

• In North America (US & Canada), of 312 known languages, 123 are extinct (40%). Of the 58 families (+isolates), 29 are extinct (50%); and of the 26 isolates, 20 are extinct (77%). Many others will soon follow.
• In South America, there were initially 112 families and isolates, a number currently reduced to 53 families and 59 isolates.  420 of the initial 1,491 language (according to Loukotka 1968) are still spoken — representing an extinction of 72% of these languages.

Campbell continues this summary by offering a global perspective:

“America’s 180 language families (+isolates) [58 North America, 10 Central America, 112 South America] represent 51% of the linguistic diversity of the world”. The worldwide total number of language isolates is 127; 65% (i.e. 83) of which are spoken in the Americas.

He goes on:

• America’s proportion of the world’s linguistic diversity: 51% (180 of the world’s total of c.350 families (+isolates))
• More broadly, already 106 of the approximately 350 independent language families (including isolates) of the world are extinct, 30%.

However, there is one caveat:

“These figures are very misleading, however, in a significant sense: of the c. 150 surviving American Indian languages in the US, only 20 are being learned actively by children in traditional transmission, and even for many of these 20, every year fewer and fewer children are learning them. Very shortly, this set of numbers and percentages will change dramatically (unless revitalization efforts are successful) … a tragedy painful beyond contemplation.”