Word Watch

Wampanoag culture did not fare as well. Over the years, the tribes were decimated by wars and diseases. Many of their traditions were forgotten; by the 20th Century, they no longer spoke their own language. But that is changing.

In 1993, Jessie "Little Doe" Baird dreamed that she was among familiar people who spoke strange words. Baird, who belongs to the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe in Cape Cod, took this as a prophecy: she had to bring back the Wampanoag language. Working with expert linguists, she reconstructed the spoken language from written documents.

Today, Wampanoag has a dictionary of 13,000 words and a grammar book. It is taught to a few dozen people in the community - including, crucially, children. Ethnologue, a reference guide to the world's spoken tongues, classifies it as one of just a few "reawakening" languages.

Languages are dying fast. There are many reasons for this, such as globalisationThe growing interdependence of the world's economies, peoples and cultures. and government policies. But while a lot of effort is made to save "endangered" languages, it is very rare for a dead one to be revived.

A notable exception is HebrewThe historical language of the Israelites, Hebrew was revived as a common language for Jewish immigrants in Palestine and later as the official language of Israel., which had been out of use for two millennia when Zionists decided to resurrect it as the vernacular of modern-day IsraelA country in the Middle East, and the only Jewish nation in the modern period. It is seen by Jews, Christians and Muslims as the Holy Land.. As the language of Jewish scripture, Hebrew held great symbolic value for those trying to create a Jewish state.

There are more modest examples too. In Cornwall, a determined group of people are trying to reintroduce Cornish. Then last native speaker is thought to have died in 1777, but it is now used on street signs and heard in some households.

However, the future of Cornish is now in doubt: the central government cut funding for the language last year. Reviving languages costs money, after all. Is it really worthwhile?

No, say some. These efforts display a misunderstanding of how language works. Tongues are constantly dying out, while new ones are being born. Those that disappear were simply not needed anymore - bringing them back is just pointless nostalgiaThe feelings of happiness and slight sadness you get when remembering the past. . The money and effort would be better spent on getting people to learn useful languages.

Language is about more than just communication, reply others. It gives you access to unique literature, history, and ways of thinking. As one student of Wampaonag puts it, learning her ancestral language "gives such a broader perspective on [my] culture". People like the Wampaonag lost a lot through the centuries. It is only fair that they get to recover some of it.

Pilgrims: From England, one of the first groups of European settlers in North America.

Plymouth: The site (in modern-day Massachusetts) where the Pilgrims founded their first colony.

Written documents: Wampanoag has a big trove of historical documents. These include land claims, the personal diaries of tribal chiefs and a bible translated by the missionary John Eliot in 1663.

Government policies: Governments in many countries discourage or ban the use of smaller languages, generally on the principle that one common language helps communication. Of course, they have political reasons too: an attack on a language is an attack on the power and status of a minority.

Out of use: As an everyday spoken language, that is. Hebrew continued to be written (and read aloud), mostly by religious institutions.

Cornish: Closely related to Welsh and Breton (which is still spoken in the northwestern French region of Brittany).

Last native speaker: It is not clear exactly how much Cornish the fishwife Dolly Pentreath could speak. But accounts from the time agree that she could swear in the language.

What do we know? Ethnologue counts 7,099 living languages. But that number is shrinking: it is estimated that one dies out every two weeks. Meanwhile, a mere 23 languages are spoken by half the world's population. Mandarin has the most native speakers.

What do we not know? How accurate 7,099 is. New languages are still being discovered by linguists, and it can take a while to register the deaths of old ones. It also depends on how you define a language. Experts continue to debate the point at which two dialects (variants of one language) become two different languages. Some define it as when speakers of the two can no longer understand each other. But that is not always true: speakers of Danish and Swedish, for example, can hold conversations.