1 Markings - Vanishing Voices

Vanishing Voices

One language dies every 14 days. By the next century nearly half of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken on Earth will likely disappear, as communities abandon native tongues in favor of English, Mandarin, or Spanish. What is lost when a language goes silent?

The Seris Indian people see their language as a defining characteristic, a seed of their identity. One Seri told me of a local expression that says ‘everyone has a flower inside, and inside the flower is a word.’

Russ Rymer

(The Seris are an indigenous people of the Mexican state of Sonora)

©Jeff Guess 2017