Educação pode mudar sua vida

(...) Languages have always died. As cultures have risen and fallen, so their languages have emerged and disappeared. We can get some sense of it following the appearance of written language, forwe now have records (in various forms – inscrip-tions, clay tablets, documents) of dozens of extinct languages from classical times – Bithynian, Cilician,Pisidian, Phrygian, Paphlagonian, Etruscan,Sumerian, Elamite, Hittite... We know of some 75 extinct languages which have been spoken in Europe and Asia Minor. But the extinct languages ofwhich we have some historical record in this part ofthe world must be only a fraction of those for which we have nothing. And when we extend our covera-ge to the whole world, where written records of ancient languages are largely absent, it is easy tosee that no sensible estimate can be obtained aboutthe rate at which languages have died in the past.We can of course make guesses at the size of the population in previous eras, and the likely size of communities, and (on the assumption that each community would have had its own language) work out possible numbers of languages.(...)