A review by spacestationtrustfund
Poems from the Edge of Extinction: An Anthology of Poetry in Endangered Languages by Chris McCabe
4.0
There are two ways for languages to go extinct: either they die, or they are killed. A natural death can happen when a language is gradually replaced by others (such as the slow decline of Latin), or when a language evolves into something else entirely (such as the passage from Old to Middle to Modern English). Unnatural deaths are almost always the result of genocide.
Belarusian, one of the languages represented in this anthology, is a good example of a language struggling against an unnatural death: Russian has been steadily killing it for decades if not centuries. Other examples of similarly dying languages include Gaeilge, Welsh, and Scots (all attacked quite purposefully by English), or minority Chinese languages (including Cantonese), or any of the various Amerindian languages.
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The languages represented in this anthology are Assyrian, Belarusian, Chimwiini (Bravanese Swahili), Gaeilge, Māori, Diné bizaad (Navajo), Patuá (Macanese), Fäeag Rotuạm (Rotuman), Sámi, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Yiddish, and Zoque (O'de püt). Representative poets are Joy Harjo, Jackie Kay, Aurélia Lassaque, Nineb Lamassu, Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, Valzhyna Mort, Laura Tohe, Taniel Varoujan, and Avrom Sutzkever. I was quite curious as to why these particular languages were selected, but really there's no good answer, because no language is inherently more important or valuable than any other, right? Except Dutch. Dutch has absolutely zero value, and should definitely die.
Belarusian, one of the languages represented in this anthology, is a good example of a language struggling against an unnatural death: Russian has been steadily killing it for decades if not centuries. Other examples of similarly dying languages include Gaeilge, Welsh, and Scots (all attacked quite purposefully by English), or minority Chinese languages (including Cantonese), or any of the various Amerindian languages.
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The languages represented in this anthology are Assyrian, Belarusian, Chimwiini (Bravanese Swahili), Gaeilge, Māori, Diné bizaad (Navajo), Patuá (Macanese), Fäeag Rotuạm (Rotuman), Sámi, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Yiddish, and Zoque (O'de püt). Representative poets are Joy Harjo, Jackie Kay, Aurélia Lassaque, Nineb Lamassu, Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, Valzhyna Mort, Laura Tohe, Taniel Varoujan, and Avrom Sutzkever. I was quite curious as to why these particular languages were selected, but really there's no good answer, because no language is inherently more important or valuable than any other, right? Except Dutch. Dutch has absolutely zero value, and should definitely die.