by Anush hamzehian|vittorio mortarotti
L'Isola
2021
£40.00
First edition first impression in new condition. No markings, this is a new book.
According to the mapping made by UNESCO in 2010 for the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, 250 languages have disappeared in the last fifty years and 3,000 are currently in danger.
Languages disappear at a speed that is unprecedented in the history of humanity.
A language dies bringing with it a precise knowledge of the environment that it has named for centuries: plants, animals, diseases, religion. Along with a language, a conception and a vision of the world disappear forever.
Yonaguni is a small piece of land surfaced from the sea, far from everything and beaten by the strongest currents of the Pacific Ocean. There are no more than a thousand people living on the island, few of whom still speak the Dunan.
Dunan is a Severely Endangered Language: in a few years it will no longer exist and it will be definitely forgotten.
Together with the language the whole universe of Yonaguni is dissolving. On the island there is no work, there are no high schools, there is no future; the families abandon it, the elderly people die.
