ABSTRACT
We do not speak one language, nor half a dozen, nor twenty or thirty. Four to five thousand languages are thought to be in current use. This figure is almost certainly on the low side. We have, until now, no language atlas which can claim to be anywhere near exhaustive. Furthermore the four to five thousand living languages are themselves the remnants of a much larger number spoken in the past. … One can only guess at the extent of lost languages. It seems reasonable to assert that the human species developed and made use of at least twice the number we can record today. … In many parts of the earth, the language-map is a mosaic each of whose stones, some of them minuscule, is entirely or partially distinct from all others in colour and texture. In 1845 a traveller came across five speakers of Kot. Today no living trace can be found. … Blank spaces and question marks cover the immense tracts of the linguistic geography of the [earth.….] tongues remain unidentified or resist inclusion in any agreed category. … The language catalogue begins with Aba, an Altaic idiom spoken by Tatars, and ends with Zyriene, A Finno-Ugaritic speech in use between the Urals and the Arctic shore. … By comparison, the classification of different types of stars, planets and asteroids runs to a mere handful.
