Last Whispers

Every two weeks the world loses a language. At an unprecedented speed, faster than the extinction of some species, our linguistic diversity—the very means by which we know ourselves—is eroding. Today out of the 7,000 languages remaining on Earth, only 30 are spoken among the majority of the world population. It is estimated that at least half of the planet’s currently spoken languages will have died out by the end of this century. Some estimates project a much greater speed of disappearance. Last Whispers is a project about the mass extinction of languages. By definition, this extinction occurs in silence, since silence is the very form it takes. Last Whispers sounds what has gone silent. While we drown in the noise of our own voices—uttered within dominant cultures and languages—we are surrounded by a vast ocean of silence. Last Whispers aims to further awareness of linguistic extinction.