Introduction
Christopher Moseley
Nine years have passed since the previous edition of this Atlas was published. Nine years have also passed since the death of Professor Stephen Wurm of the Australian National University, who edited the first two editions. They marked the first attempt to plot on maps the locations of the languages that were most in danger of extinction within the foreseeable future. Both those editions highlighted particular areas of the world where linguistic diversity was being seriously depleted.
This project was born of a concern for the loss of diversity in this most basic human resource. It parallels the increasing concern over the loss of the world’s biological diversity, and for related reasons: the loss of isolated and self-sustaining habitats in the face of encroaching urbanization, economic concentration and the consequent homogenization of human cultures.
By its very nature, this Atlas tends to become outdated more rapidly than an ordinary language atlas would do. What is plotted on these maps are the most fragile linguistic balances – languages in danger of disappearing, even disappearing from one edition to the next.
The present edition is a logical progression from the second edition of 2001, which was divided into five parts: an introduction detailing developments in the study of endangered languages since the first edition; a description of the phenomenon of language endangerment and the death of languages; a short report on efforts by the scientific community to describe and record endangered languages; a fairly detailed overview of language endangerment in all major parts of the world; and a small atlas of some fourteen maps, some completely new and some others revised from the previous edition.
What the 2001 edition called ‘major parts of the world’ could be defined as those areas where the pressure on minority languages was the greatest, to put it in the simplest terms. This edition, however,
