"Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages", by Mark Abley
ISBN: 061823649X This book operates from the standpoint of the SapirWhorfHypothesis, and much of what is described is difficult to explain on any other basis.
From the Amazon website:
- There are roughly 6,000 languages in use in the world today, most of them spoken by a tiny number of people-further proof of humanity's ability to generate intoxicating variety. Sadly, the processes of linguistic imperialism may still be as strong as they have ever been; expansion of the major world languages, particularly English, is, according to Abley, likely to bring about the elimination of most of these languages by century's end.