Language Quote by Andrew Dalby

“The spread of languages shouldn't imply the decay of national languages. There are so many literary and historical memories, so many joys and sorrows…

— Kató Lomb

“over half the languages in the world, for example, have fewer than five thousand speakers, and over a thousand languages have under a dozen.”

— Nicholas Ostler

“What the survival of threatened languages means, perhaps, is the endurance of dozens, hundreds, thousands of subtly different notions of truth.”

— Mark Abley

“so many languages have fallen off the edge of the world”

— Lucille Clifton

The world's five thousand extant languages are products of our shared ability, but the five thousand cultures they create are separate from each other.

— Richard Leakey

At some point in the next century the number of invented languages will probably overtake the number of surviving natural languages.

— Cullen Murphy

To lovers of the long and intricate history of language the disuse and final death of certain words is a matter of regret. Yet…

— Mary Ellen Chase

“It is a noteworthy feature of 20C culture that for the first time in over a thousand years its educated class is not expected…

— Jacques Barzun

I will just take the chance that the language will still be relevant in 100 years, which is something we cannot take for granted…

— Sjon

“When a language dies, a possible world dies with it.”

— George Steiner

... the progress of the language has caused us to lose many old treasures. It is thus with all progress, and one must make…

— George Sand

It's haunting to realize that half of the languages of the world are teetering on the brink of extinction.

— Wade Davis