希少な生物が数多く生息している地域には、同様に希少な言語が数多く存在しているという事実に注目すべきである。
What we actually need to pay attention to is that regions where many rare species live are also home to many rare languages.
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The research results indicate that such a correlation was reported by a joint US-UK research team in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
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However, needless to say, the majority of these languages have very few speakers and are in danger of extinction due to the spread of international languages like English.
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The research team conducted a detailed analysis of the relationship between regional characteristics and ecosystems for approximately 6,900 languages.
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また、約2200の言語はこうした地域に固有のものであり、そのうち約1500言語が話者1万人以下、さらに約500言語は話者が1000人にも満たない。
Furthermore, about 2,200 languages are unique to these regions, of which around 1,500 have fewer than 10,000 speakers, and about 500 have fewer than 1,000 speakers.
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Such languages are not merely cultural heritage; they also hold value as systems of knowledge that are inseparable from the diversity of ecosystems.
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The research group has not conducted a detailed analysis on why linguistic and biological diversity are concentrated in the same regions, stating that it is extremely complex and various factors are intertwined in each area, but the paper clearly sounds the alarm.
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In other words, it is undeniable that the expansion of international economic activities poses a threat to rare languages, and as economic globalization advances, the elimination of minority languages and the regional cultures associated with them is inevitable.
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The loss of two types of diversity—namely, linguistic and biological—will surely lead to the spiritual impoverishment of human society as a whole.
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