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Weekend


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June 24, 2005

Strange But True!

  • A weekly column of incidental information, off-the-wall observations and other random facts about the world.
    • By BILL SONES and RICH SONES, Ph.D.
    Special to the Journal

    Q. On the one hand are Birale, Saami, Yup'ik, Livonian, Enets and Narau; and on the other hand are Hindi, Bengali, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and English. What are the two hands here?

    A. The first are a few of the world's many endangered languages, often with less than 50 speakers, says Daniel Comiskey in the "Indiana (University) Alumni Magazine." The second includes the largest languages, with maybe hundreds of millions of speakers, dubbed predator languages because they swallow up the littles.


     
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