As the world prepares for the annual St. Patrick’s Day celebration of Irish culture ancestry, the Irish language approaches extinction:


It is ironic that as the United States and many other countries worldwide prepare to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, the world’s premier celebration of Irish culture and identity, the Irish language is dying.

On February 20th, The United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) released the new edition of its “Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger,” declaring Irish as one of 632 “definitely endangered” languages, along with neighboring Gaelic (a Scottish dialect).

Despite the increasingly critical declines in these and many other global languages (as UNESCO estimates that half of the world’s 6,700 languages are in danger of extinction), Language Line Services, the world’s leading language service provider with interpreters available in nearly 176 unique languages, is still seeing spikes in demand for interpretation in some very remote languages and often in unlikely places.

Case in point, the need for Karen, a lesser known language of Burma, showing up in Memphis, TN, a spike in demand for Swahili interpreters in Kentucky and a surge of Krio speakers (Sierra Leone) in South Florida.

 

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