In its 2017 edition, Ethnologue, a renowned publication on language statistics, reported that the top ten most widely spoken languages in the world were used by approximately 5.2 billion speakers. Since 70% of the world’s population would be able to communicate by using these ten languages, some may wonder if there is still meaning in preserving the languages used by a minority of the world’s population. 

The answer to this would be a most emphatic yes, according to the Foundation of Endangered Languages. As the Foundation states in its manifesto, the disappearance of a language brings with it immeasurable losses—the loss of inherited knowledge and linguistic diversity, and the impoverishment of the culture of former speakers. Today, the Foundation works to raise awareness of issues affecting endangered languages and provides grants for language-preservation projects.

Enduring Voices is a project that also works to preserve endangered languages. It aims to record and prevent language loss by identifying areas with the greatest linguistic diversity and areas where the least-studied languages are under threat. By identifying areas where languages should be studied before it’s too late, Enduring Voices helps researchers to discover and document some of the rarest languages in the world. 

Language preservation must also enlist the help of existing speakers. Talking Dictionaries, for example, is an online tool that speakers of endangered languages can use to record and upload words and phrases, so that dictionary users will be able to hear the words as they are meant to be spoken. The dictionaries are especially important for languages that are unaccompanied by a writing system, as a new generation of speakers will not be able to learn the language once it dies out.

Questions: 

1. What is the topic of the passage?

2. What is the Foundation’s attitude towards preserving the languages used only by a small proportion of the population?

3. What can be done through Enduring Voices?

4. Which of the following is true about Talking Dictionaries?

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