Do you speak an endangered language?

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On Tuesday 24 February 2009 19:31:08 Peter Korsten wrote:
> Have a look:
>
> http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00206
>
> Apparently, I don't - yet. But it's marked as 'unsafe'.
>
> This list is a good example, really. We all speak English here, but all
> this global communication leads to a marginalisation of local
> communication, or so it seems.
>
> Strange that Limburgian-Ripuarian (I can easily understand the dialect
> from Cologne) with 2.6m speakers is marked as unsafe, whereas Maltese
> with less than 400,000 speakers is not. It really depends on what the
> lingua franca or the official language is in a certain area.

It seems that the languages are marked "Unsafe" as soon as they are not 
recognized and used by the local administration (translation of official 
communications, roadsigns, etc.). They also take into account the ratio of 
speakers vs. the total population, which could explain the Maltese "score".