Is Irish the only language that's declining? (1 Viewer)

[quasiquasi]

By some counts, only 600 of the 6,000 or so languages in the world are 'safe' from the threat of extinction.

Hmm...this page (from the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project at SOAS) gives the more conservative 50% number, as does the barely-referenced Wikipedia page on Endangered Languages. Looks like everyone's free to pick their own preferred estimate.

 

[quasiquasi]

The letters j, k, q, v, w, x, y and z do not occur in native Irish words, but do appear in some English loanwords, for example jab (job) and veain (van).
From here.

Mad fact of the day:

The Turkish alphabet has no q, w or x. Instead, those characters are transliterated into Turkish as k, v and ks. The 1928 establishing Law 1353 made the writing of q, w and x illegal; the 1982 Constitution explicitly retains this law. In practice, the requirement of using the Turkish alphabet in state registers has made it impossible to register some Kurdish personal names on birth certificates exactly as they are rendered in the Kurdish alphabet, where q, w, and x are in use.

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_alphabet)

 

[Super Dexta]

Hmm...this page (from the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project at SOAS) gives the more conservative 50% number, as does the barely-referenced Wikipedia page on Endangered Languages. Looks like everyone's free to pick their own preferred estimate.

the general agreement is 'lots'

 

[Squiggle]

After World War Two the French were so concerned about English words creeping into everyday use that they banned Franglais in any public use (TV, Newspapers, Magazines etc).

For a bastard language "English" is doing pretty well.