Endangered Languages and Cultural Impact

“Many of the 113 languages spoken in the Andes Mountains and Amazon basin are poorly known and are rapidly giving way to Spanish or Portuguese, or in a few cases, to a more dominant indigenous language. In this region, for example, a group known as the Kallawaya use Spanish or Quechua in daily life, but also have their own secret tongue, used mainly for preserving knowledge of medicinal plants, some of which were previously unknown to science. John Noble Wilford, New York Times, September 18, 2007

Identify TWO endangered languages and their distribution.

Identify ONE cultural trait that the groups with endangered languages have in common.

Explain TWO reasons why languages such as the Kallawaya’s are dying out.

Explain what is lost and what is gained as languages such as Kallawaya’s die out.

Describe how historically the political geography of colonialism affected indigenous languages.