Introduction

"Then Little Coyote did something bad. He suggested to Old Man that he give the people different languages so they would misunderstand each other and use their weapons in wars... Old Man did what Little Coyote said, and the people had different languages and made war on each other."

The passage above is from the cosmology of the Crow, a Plains Indians group of North America. It is one variant of a motif found in creation myths around the world that describes how the ancients lost their ability to understand each other's speech when one language was replaced by many. The mythical time when all peoples could communicate freely with each other and live in peace was portrayed as a lost paradise, succeeded by the babble of tongues and strife among nations.

If this myth were true, we might well be on our way to another golden age, for today the great diversity of languages in the world is rapidly declining. This fact has been known and documented by linguists for some time, but today language disappearance has accelerated to the point where we are witnessing widespread language extinctions. Some estimates project that the current number of languages in the world (perhaps 6,000) will be cut in half by the end of the 21 st century.

The disappearance of languages is cause for concern. It has been likened to the extinction of species-an unfortunate cultural analogue to the alarming events we are witnessing in the biological-'world. European exploration and colonization, begun in the fifteenth century, the industrial revolution, and our current globalization of trade and mass culture, combined with unprecedented demand for consumer goods, have impinged on the natural world and indigenous cultures around the globe. It is ironic that even as we celebrate diversity and multiculturalism we are experiencing homogenization. To cite two examples, Western clothing is replacing ethnic dress around the world, and American pop music is crowding out traditional folk music. Variety in all aspects of life and culture has been a source of wonder and celebration for ages, and the loss of that variety is indeed an unfortunate prospect.

Every language has its own subtleties of expression; it is a well known quandary in translating poetry that one must sacrifice either faithfulness or beauty in rendering verses into another language. Although linguists can study and record a dying language, once it ceases to be spoken, a unique and distinctive worldview is lost forever.

This encyclopedia was undertaken with the aim of gathering not only linguistic descriptions of a selected assortment of languages from renowned scholars, but historical and cultural information as well. For that reason, the book will interest general readers as well as linguistic specialists. We have tried to include nearly all contemporary languages spoken by at least two million people. Smaller languages are also documented to allow for geographical and typological representation. Finally, a number of ancient languages are included, because of our focus on philology, history and culture.

—Leeming, David and Margaret Leeming. Dictionary of Creation Myths. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Motif A1333, "Confusion of Tongues" in Stith Thompson, Motif Index of Folk Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Myths, Ballads, Fables, Medieval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest Books, and Local Legends. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1932-36.

The working title of this book was The Encyclopedia of the World's Languages, Past and Present, and that is the title under which the contributors submitted their entries. A work as complex and comprehensive as this one is sure to contain errors that escape even the repeated readings of several people, for which we take complete responsibility. It is our hope that with user comments for future editions, this work will continue to be a standard resource in the years to come.

Jane Garry and Carl Rubino January 2001