Will we soon say goodbye to Gaelic and 24 other languages?

Irish (Gaelic) is considered an endangered language and in order to try and put some attention on the issue of endangered languages we found native speakers from 25 endangered languages on behalf of GoCompare. Irish is one of them and there’s 10 more European languages as well on this list!

The European languages you can listen to are these:
Basque, Belarusian, Breton, Cornish, Irish (Gaelic), Limburgian, Lombard, North Frisian, Walloon, Welsh, West Frisian.

Listen here: 
http://www.gocompare.com/travel-insurance/endangered-languages/

Including the European, among 2,500 languages are in danger of becoming extinct, and some of them are spoken by only 30 people(!).

We wanted to highlight these beautiful languages and let the world hear how they sound! To do this, we found native speakers from 25 of them and asked them to record a sentence spoken in their language. What we asked them to say was “A different language is a different vision of life”.

When we lose a language, we don’t just lose words; we lose a whole perspective.

10,000 speakers left – North Frisian
In 1976, this minority language was spoken by 10,000 people, classing it as ‘severely endangered’. A state law recognised it as the official language of North Germany’s Nordfriesland district and Heligoland island in 2004.
Hear it here: “En ouderen spräke as en ouderen wise, et laawen tu siien”

750,000 speakers left – Welsh
Counting just over half a million speakers in Wales, this language is a member of the Brittonic branch of Celtic languages. It was one of the 55 languages that represented Earth on NASA’s Voyager program in 1977.

Hear it here: ”Mae iaith wahanol yn weledigaeth wahanol o’r bywyd”

The piece is fully embeddable by clicking </> and adding it to your site, this enables your readers to get the full experience without moving away from your website.

http://www.gocompare.com/travel-insurance/endangered-languages/

The full list of languages included and where they are spoken:

• Aymara: Bolivia, Chile, Peru
• Balti: India, Pakistan
• Basque: Spain, France
• Belarusian: Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Ukraine
• Breton: France
• Choctaw: USA
• Cornish: England
• Guaraní: Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil
• Irish: Ireland
• Kalmyk: Russia
• Limburgian: Netherlands, Germany
• Lombard: Italy, Switzerland
• Nafusi: Libya
• Nawat: El Salvador
• North Frisian: Germany
• North Sami: Finland, Norway, Sweden, Russia
• Ojibwe: USA
• Ossete: Georgia, Russia
• Quechua: Bolivia
• Venetan: Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Brazil, Mexico
• Walloon: Belgium, France, Luxembourg
• Welsh: Wales
• West Frisian: Netherlands
• Wichi: Argentina, Bolivia
• Wiradjuri: Australia