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Home Intersectoral Platform on Small Island Developing States    Print Print
UNESCO Implementing Mauritius Strategy

CHAPTERS

 1.  Climate change
 2.  Natural disasters
 3.  Waste Management
 4.  Coastal & marine resources
 5.  Freshwater resources
 6.  Land resources
 7.  Energy resources
 8.  Tourism resources
 9.  Biodiversity resources
10. Transport & communication
11. Science & technology
12. Graduation from LDC status
13. Trade
14. Capacity building & ESD
15. Production & consumption
16. Enabling environments
17. Health
18. Knowledge management
19. Culture
20. Implementation
UNESCO at Mauritius '05
Contributions & events
From Barbados'94 to Mauritius'05
UNESCO involvement
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Endangered languages

Language is one manifestation of cultural diversity. Each language reflects a unique world-view and culture complex, mirroring the manner in which a speech community has resolved its problems in dealing with the world, and has formulated its thinking, its system of philosophy and understanding of the world around it. With each vanishing language, an irreplaceable element of human thought in its multiform variations is lost forever.

There are about 6,000 languages spoken in the world today, most of them in several dialects. About a third of these are located in the Greater Pacific Area, comprising approximately 1,200 Austronesian languages (principally the Malayo-Polynesian group) and about 800 Papuan languages.

UNESCO's work on endangered languages includes support to initiatives to describe and record these languages, as well as to preserve and maintain them. One specific project in this field in the late 1990s was that on Melanesian languages. Among follow-up activities is support to the recording and revitalization of languages in the Melanesian islands of the southwestern Pacific, as described in a special small-islands dossier in the April 2004 issue of UNESCO's New Courier magazine.

Much information on the status of threatened languages is given in the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing,first published in 1996, with a new revised edition released in 2001.

Start date 10-10-2005 2:10 pm
End Date 10-10-2005 2:10 pm

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

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