【推荐2】Language diversity is dying. While there are over 5,000 languages in the world, experts estimate (估计)that many are on their way out. Statista, a data provider, compiled(编译)the results of the ongoing work of the Endangered Languages Project to create a map of endangered languages highlighting what regions of the world are most affected.

The Endangered Language Project is an online platform administered by the University of Hawaii Manoa that collects information on the world’s languages, such as where each is spoken, the number of speakers left, what measures have been taken to preserve it, etc. For example, by perusing the Endangered Language Project’s website you can see that Irish Gaelic is an endangered language mostly spoken in Ireland and that consists of four different dialects; Irish Gaelic is spoken by 20,000 to 40,000 people worldwide.

Experts acknowledge that the rapid extinction of languages throughout the world is a fact that cannot be denied, but they also explain that it is very difficult to obtain exact numbers when it comes to languages and their extinction. This is because language information is outdated or limited, and it can be different in some cases to distinguish between languages and dialects. The Linguistic Society of America notes that some estimates state that 80 percent of the world’s languages could be gone by the next century as languages like English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and Russian become even more of a majority.

On its website, the Endangered Language Project also features an interactive map of endangered languages that’s color-coded according to each   language’s level of threat. Each language is represented by a colored dot on the map, and clicking the dot will reveal the name of the language and its status. Clicking on the name of the language will lead you to a more detailed information card about the specific language.

【推荐1】In July 1915, severely tortured by his poor health, James Murray, one of the early editors of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), defined one final word. After his 36 years’ dedication to the dictionary, his hard labour had taken a toll, knowing he would not see the project complete.

The poetic quality of Murray’s final days is one of the many memorable tales in The Dictionary People. Beginning in 1857, the OED was a huge crowdsourcing project - “the Wikipedia of the 19th century” - comprising 3, 000 people. The idea was to create a “descriptive” dictionary that tracked words’ use and meaning over time, unlike its “prescriptive”18th-century predecessor by Samuel Johnson, which told readers how to say and use words. Volunteers read widely, mailing in examples of how “rare, old-fashioned, new, strange” words were used. What is surprising about this fairly random method is that it worked.

The origin story of Sarah Ogilvie’s book is almost as improbable as that of the dictionary itself. Ms Ogilvie, a former scholar who served as an editor for the OED, went into the documents of Oxford University Press and came across an old notebook. It had belonged to Murray and contained the names and details of the dictionary volunteers, most of whom had previously been unknown. The Dictionary People is her work of detective scholarship, bringing the lives behind the names to readers.

Ms Ogilvie’s book is full of intriguing stories. The presentation of the book is unconventional, too, taking its structure from the work it describes. There are 26 alphabetical chapters, each celebrating a group of contributors ( memorably, “K” is for “kleptomaniac” people who desire to steal). This is a clever arrangement, though it sometimes means that broader issues emerge only in pieces.

Essentially, this is a story about ordinary people. It is concrete proof of those who, to cite dictionary-helper George Eliot, “lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs”.

【推荐2】Today, people cooperate closely with those from different countries and cultures. Cultural diversity in a company can bring individual and organizational benefits, open people’s minds to new approaches, and help them be more creative； on the other hand, it also presents challenges that come from using a foreign language.

No matter how well we understand and speak a foreign language, it’s really hard for us to reach the level that we have in our mother tongue. When people who have different mother tongues use a language that they do not feel as competent in as their own, language becomes a barrier that prevents effective communication. Meanwhile, difficulty in speaking or poor language knowledge is often considered to be a lack of competence and professionalism, which is not true. On a broader and more emotional level, all this causes greater difficulty in establishing relationships of mutual (互相的) trust, making cooperation between the groups more difficult and success less likely.

Behind every language, there is a system of different values and beliefs. These make up the culture of each language. For international teams, it is necessary to have a broader attitude and be able to accept and understand different cultures. Improving intercultural communication skills means building and training awareness of oneself and others. This is done by reflecting on differences actively and learning about individuals who speak a different language and have different values and habits.

It’s impossible to completely eliminate the language barrier when people use a foreign language. Linguistic(语言的) and cultural differences will always exist. To better deal with a multicultural working team, it is essential to acquire and maintain awareness of the limits and strengths of the language. We need to pay attention to the cultural diversity present in the team and to the misunderstandings that could arise, making efforts to use communication strategies that are as inclusive and comprehensive (全面的) as possible.

【推荐3】Can you imagine there being a community where boys and girls growing up together can finally speak different languages? In Ubang Nigeria, it really happens. It’s not exactly clear what percentage of the words in the men’s and women’s languages are different, but there are enough examples to make sentences sound different when spoken by the opposite sex. For “clothing”, men use the word “nki”, while women say “ariga”; “kitchi” means tree for men, while women say “okweng”. These are not just some slight pronunciation differences, but totally different words. “It’s almost like two different lexicons (词汇集),” a language expert, Chi Chi Undle said. “There are a lot of words that men and women share in common, but there are others which are totally different depending on your sex. They don’t sound alike, and don’t have the same letters. They are completely different words.”

Interestingly, both men and women are able to understand each other perfectly in Ubang, as both boys and girls grow up around their parents and get to learn both languages, but by the age of 10, boys are expected to speak in the male tongue. It seems that there is a stage the male will reach and he discovers he is not using the rightful language. When he starts speaking the men’s language, you know the maturity is coming into him.

No one really knows how or why the double-language tradition of Ubang began. Chi Chi Undie believes the two languages are the result of a “double-sex culture” where men and women operate in two separate spheres (范围) and live in separate worlds that rarely come together. However, she admits this is a weak theory, as the double-sex culture is present in many parts of Africa, where there are no different languages for men and women.

Today, with English words constantly entering the lexicon of young Nigerians, Ubang’s two languages are in danger of being lost forever. Worse still, neither the male nor female language is written down, so they both rely on young people passing them down to the next generation.