ABSTRACT
The primary aim of this book has been to not just educate readers on the various dimensions of language and linguistics but also to instil a spirit of enquiry and make them examine languages from diverse language families. Of the 7117 world's languages, only 4% are spoken by 96% of the world's population, which means that 50% of these languages have less than 10,000 speakers and 25% have less than 1000 speakers. The reasons for this reduction in number are varied: shift to a more dominant language with more economic, social, and political power; result of wars, diseases or genocide (e.g., Great Andamanese); and lack of transmission to the younger generation. Most teachers and researchers stop with lamenting about the loss of languages and sometimes just give talks highlighting the issue but very rarely go beyond that.
