70% of romance languages are destined to disappear

[Peyrol]

It seems that the great diversity among romance languages is destined to disappear...here the classification in 2010 according to ethnologue:

National languages or languages with million of active speakers, not in extinction risk:

- Castillian (in all the variants)
- Portuguese (same as above)
- Oil french (same as above)
- Catalan
- Standard italian
- Venetic
- Neapolitan (in all the variants)
- Romanian

Potentially threatened (rapidly declining):

-Sicilian
-Eastern Lombard (Orobich)
-Piemontese
-Furlane (Rhaetoromance)
-Talian (colonial venetian spoken in Brazil)
-Romansh (swiss rhaetoromance)

Threatened:

-Asturian/Leonese
-Occitan (in all the variants)
-Western Lombard (Insubric)
-Monegasque ligurian
-Sardinian
-Valdotaine arpitàn (Franco-Provençal)

Heavy threatened/Nearly extinc:

-Corsican
-Mirandès
-Genovese and levant Ligurian
-Emilian
-Rumagnòl
-Juife (piemontese-judean language)
-Savoyarde and Genevieve Arpitàm (Franco-Provençal)
-Istriot
-Venetian istriot
-Aromanian
-Istro-Romanian
-Mexican venetian (chipileno).

Extinct:

- Dalmatian (last speaker dead in 1898)
- Venetian-cypriot
- Ionian venetian
- Crimean ligurian
- Tuscan judean
- Roman Judean
- Montenegrin/Crnagoran venetian
- North african romance (early middle ages)
- Pannonian (early middle ages)
- Morlac (balkano-romance, middle ages)
- Romano-britannic (early middle ages)
- Rioplatense tuscan
- Panamese ligurian

[Vesuvian Sky]

Interesting. The legacy of Rome left many variants of venacular Latin. But the rise of the nation states succeding Rome have in turn reduced these variants of vernacular Latin and practically obliterated some already.

Although, the Romans themselves truncated the existence of other Italic languages, in addition to continental Celtic languages among others.

What to take from this: the rise, fall, and success of languages has a lot to do with power centers.

[Peyrol]

Interesting. The legacy of Rome left many variants of venacular Latin. But the rise of the nation states succeding Rome have in turn reduced these variants of vernacular Latin and practically obliterated some already.

Although, the Romans themselves truncated the existence of other Italic languages, in addition to continental Celtic languages among others.

What to take from this: the rise, fall, and success of languages has a lot to do with power centers.

That's for sure, and this show how the ''national unity'' of many states (Italy, Spain, France) caused the disappearing of local languages, replaced by the ''national'' language, or simply with the language of the conquerors...Italy is the only exception...piemontese didn't became the national language in favor of standard italian, which was created on Renaissance tuscan.

Also the dissolution of states (like Venetian republic, with the disappearing of the colonial venetian variants, except the brazilian Talian) or the invasions of other population (Anglosaxon in England, Germanic and Slavi people in Pannonia and Balkans and Arabs in North africa) were literally disastrous...

[Vesuvian Sky]

That's for sure, and this show how the ''national unity'' of many states (Italy, Spain, France) caused the disappearing of local languages, replaced by the ''national'' language, or simply with the language of the conquerors...Italy is the only exception...piemontese didn't became the national language, which was created on Renaissance tuscan.

Also the dissolution of states (like Venetian republic, with the disappearing of the colonial venetian variants, except the brazilian Talian) or the invasions of other population (Anglosaxon in England, Germanic and Slavi people in Pannonia and Balkans and Arabs in North africa) were literally disastrous...

That's an interesting point regarding Piemontese although one could also say a language thrives over others simply since it has influence and hence why the Florentine dialect of Italian became "standard Italian". Florence had I suppose you could say more literary/artistic influence at the time. I know the most widespread use of "Italian" in literature was indeed the Florentine dialect and that played a major role in "standardizing" "Italian".

[Permafrost]

So it would seem. Many of these are unfortunately lost due to the crimes perpetrated on ethnic Italians who settled outside of the contemporary borders of Italy during Venetian rule. Others are being lost today because of massive immigration policies, both internal and external.

-Istriot

My latin teacher was one of the few living people who could speak it. An odd language, at times the lexicon would seem completely venetian (example, la ciave, la piasa etc.), at others something as alien as Furlan (lumaca - coguja, gabbiano - cucal etc.)

Comunque Dante l'ha chiamata 'La lingua dei cani' nel De vulgari eloquentia, se non erro...

[Methmatician]

In the same way Norway has it's Svalbard Global Seed Vault to store the seeds of all the plants on Earth, someone somewhere needs to create a database to store languages so that if there are no speakers left then at least we can still have the knowledge of the language in case we need to revive it.

[Daniele90]

I would not be that sure about Neapolitan.. the Apulian "variant" spoken here is heavily mixed with Italian to this day, especially by the youth; what has remained is a dialect with many italianisms but also mostly used for typical and every day expressions, rather than long discourses.. I expect it's the same for other parts of the South, don't be "fooled" by typical Southern stereotypes (although in this case it'd be not bad if it was true).. actually, I think Venetic is in a better position

[ABest]

Interesting. But this phenomenon was inevitable in an age of countries imposing one official language (or one official dialect of a language) on all of their inhabitants. This movement has arisen because language has become strongly tied to nationalistic movements that are behind the very existence of modern countries.

[Grizzly]

In the same way Norway has it's Svalbard Global Seed Vault to store the seeds of all the plants on Earth, someone somewhere needs to create a database to store languages so that if there are no speakers left then at least we can still have the knowledge of the language in case we need to revive it.

I can understand storing the language in a database for historical purposes but I don't understand why we'll need to "revive it"?

If the language became extinct chances are that there's no need for that language anymore and it's been absorbed by a more dominant language. It's pointless really.

[Arbërori]

Aromanian is definitely going extinct, although Aromanians are very fanatical when it comes to their language and Albanian aswell.