Ecolinguistics and Post-Humanist Advocacy

Abstract

Boa Senior died in January 2010 (Lawson, 2010). She was the last native speaker of Bo, a language of India’s Andaman Islands, with ancient roots (ibid.). Viktors Bertholds died in February 2009 (Laakso, 2009). He was the last native speaker of the Livonian language. William Rozario died in August 2009 (Pradeep, 2009). He was the last speaker of Cochin Indo-Portuguese Creole. Marie Smith Jones died in 2008 (BBC, 2008a). She was the last native speaker of the Eyak language of Alaska. The obituaries narrate the loneliness of these speakers, and how their deaths announce the deaths of more world languages. Alarmed advocates report how one language is dying every two weeks, and that the disappearance of languages is accelerating (Pradeep, 2009).