What happens when we lose a language? (opens in new tab)

A staggering 44% of human languages are endangered – with culture, tradition and whole ways of understanding the world at stakeWe are lucky to know anything at all about the Ubykh language. In the 1800s, tens of thousands of people spoke it on the Black Sea coast. When Russia conquered the region, the Ubykhs resisted until they were forced into exile in the Ottoman empire. Transported thousands of miles by a traumatised community now scattered across Turkey, Ubykh survived until 1992 when its...