In my attempt at multi-disciplinary studies here I am learning a lot from all sorts of sources. Today, I learnt two fascinating things from two very different people. Firstly, the authors of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment wrote that 2/3 of the world's languages are spoken by forest-dwelling people. What I didn't check was whether this includes people (like us in the UK) living in areas that were formerly forested, or only applies to areas such as tropical rain forests. This map shows a visual picture of the distribution of languages in the world - each black dot refers to one language. Looking at the map the highest concentrations of languages are definitely in tropical, forested areas.
Terralingua map of linguistic diversity
Secondly, Adrienne one of the stars of 'Real housewives: Beverley Hills' (that noted scholarly TV programme to which I have become sadly addicted) when introducing her fashion show starring her own shoes, came out with this extremely perspicacious philosophical exhortation to her audience ... 'May you find inspiration in the bigger picture, and love in the detail'. Maybe I will have that translated into all the languages marked by the black dots in the above map as my contribution to international peace and harmony...
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