Agra: At the 4International Endangered and Lesser Known Languages Conference organized by the department of linguistics, KM Institute, Bhim Rao Ambedkar University, experts from across the country and abroad discussed how languages were dying at a faster rate at present than ever before, which was an alarming trend."According to the census, India has 122 languages, including 22 scheduled and 100 non-scheduled, each with more than 10,000 native speakers. But this ignores another 180 or so lesser-known languages of the five language families," said B Ramakrishna Reddy, former dean of Telugu University, Hyderabad. "These include 20 Indo-Aryan languages, 30 Dravidian, 20 Austro-Asiatic, 110 Tibeto-Burman and 4 Andamanese languages," he added.The conference was held n collaboration with the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysore. Discussions were held on issues related to documentation, description and maintenance and endangered and lesser-known languages of India. According to the experts, over 40% of the world's approximately 7,000 languages are at risk of disappearing.The conference also saw the inauguration of the website of the Society for Endangered and Lesser-Known Languages, founded by Kavita Rastogi. "Universities of the country have been working on documenting endangered languages. BR Ambedkar University is working on Beda language spoken in Leh-Ladakh regionof Jammu and Kashmir. This resource is not only useful for description of these languages but also for developing language technologies," said Ritesh Kumar, assistant professor, lingustistics department, KM Institute.Several international scholars including Nicholas Himmelman and Dafydd Gibbon of Germany and others presented research papers on these subjects.

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