Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I, and today I
Speaker 1: will be reading National Geographic magazine dated July twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: which is donated by the publisher as a reminder. RADIOI
Speaker 1: is a reading service intended for people who are blind
Speaker 1: or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
Speaker 1: printed material. Please join me now for the article I
Speaker 1: began last time, entitled Where ice Cream Is King by
Speaker 1: Brian Kavin babaut Reischand, who's made a vocation out of
Speaker 1: recording YouTube's marketing videos for Gangapour's tempo shops, says the
Speaker 1: city has more than two hundred of them, double what
Speaker 1: it had three years ago, servicing clients from as far
Speaker 1: away as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Shah meanwhile estimates that
Speaker 1: Gangapour has turned out four hundred thousand to five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand ice cream tempos in the past ten years, of
Speaker 1: which he has made about eighty having opened his own
Speaker 1: fabrication shop four years ago to capitalize on the boom
Speaker 1: when he's not bending into summer. If there's a ceiling
Speaker 1: on the sub continent's appetite for ice cream, Ashish Suwalka
Speaker 1: doesn't see it. Another Gangapur native from a farming family,
Speaker 1: he now lives in Ua Dapur, a city of about
Speaker 1: half a million in southern Rajasthan. At twenty four, he
Speaker 1: owns three ice cream tempos and employs a small crew
Speaker 1: to staff them. The population is growing, Zuwalka says, and
Speaker 1: everyone wants dessert. Next the last swordsmiths of Japan. There
Speaker 1: were once thousands of artisans crafting traditional katana blades. Today
Speaker 1: only a small number remain. By Ellen Himmelfarbe, in a
Speaker 1: converted barn on a residential lane on Japan's Tango Peninsula,
Speaker 1: some seventy five miles north of Kyoto, three men are
Speaker 1: playing with fire while robust flames lick the edges of
Speaker 1: a twenty three hundred degree furnace. Kosuke Yamazoe uses a
Speaker 1: fifteen pound hammer on a mass of white hot steel,
Speaker 1: flattening it beat by beat in a hypnotic rhythm. Behind
Speaker 1: the shower of embers raining down on the earthen floor.
Speaker 1: Tomoyuki Miyagi grips the steel with a pair of iron
Speaker 1: tongs and bangs a smaller mallet in a melodic counterpoint. Nearby,
Speaker 1: a small stove next to a soot covered wall. Tomoki
Speaker 1: Kloramoto is making tea. This is the headquarters of Nippan
Speaker 1: gan Shosa, one of the few remaining katana foundries in
Speaker 1: the world. For hundreds of years, experts swordsmith's forge blades
Speaker 1: for Japan's warriors, including the famed Samurai. Early records show
Speaker 1: craftsmen's names in the thousands, but a decline of the
Speaker 1: art began in eighteen seventy six with the outlaw of
Speaker 1: open kiri. After World War II, the occupying forces in
Speaker 1: Japan then banned the production of katanas, resulting in additional
Speaker 1: lost works and livelihoods. Today, it is believed there may
Speaker 1: be some two hundred licensed makers left, not all active. Yamazoi,
Speaker 1: Miyagji and Kuumoto are the only katana artisans in a
Speaker 1: region that's home to one of the oldest blacksmithing workshops
Speaker 1: in all Japan. There is a sadness that it's dying
Speaker 1: out as a craft, Kurumoto tells me through an interpreter.
Speaker 1: But together they are honoring and elevating the vanishing art.
Speaker 1: The men, now in their thirties, met during a hard
Speaker 1: sought ten year apprenticeship in Tokyo with Yoshi Kazu Yoshi
Speaker 1: Hara and his father, Yoshindo Yoshihara, two of Japan's most
Speaker 1: illustrious sortsmiths. The elder Yoshihara's work is in the New
Speaker 1: York Metropolitan Museum of Arts collection. He himself was the
Speaker 1: grandson of a celebrity sortsmith of the Showa period. In
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds. After a brief stint working on
Speaker 1: their own, Kamazoi, Miyagi and Kromoto joined forces in twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen and launched Nipon Gangshosha from an abandoned barn owned
Speaker 1: by Kamzoi's grandparents. Sword making has long been an art
Speaker 1: form in Japan, and experts can date a blade much
Speaker 1: as a porcelain appraiser can date a oz or an
Speaker 1: arborist a tree. Nipon Ganshosha's swords are entirely hand built,
Speaker 1: average around fifteen thousand dollars and are sought after by collectors.
Speaker 1: As with most katanyas, they they are made from tamahangane,
Speaker 1: a type of steel that comes from iron sand mined
Speaker 1: in the Shamane Prefecture north of Hiroshima. The five figure
Speaker 1: price tag is a result of the laborious fabrication process,
Speaker 1: which can take a year or more. It begins with
Speaker 1: three days of round the clock smelting in the clay furnace.
Speaker 1: The technique of heating and methodical hammering helps draw out
Speaker 1: the slag, the waste product that results from smelting, and
Speaker 1: purify the steel, which is fused and folded into hundreds
Speaker 1: of fine layers. The hard steel is then worked into
Speaker 1: shape and the razor edge of the blade is refined
Speaker 1: much of a swords. A lure lies in the way
Speaker 1: the surface of the blade catches and throws the light.
Speaker 1: Instead of reflecting a clear beam of light, one solid beam,
Speaker 1: it will be speckled or broken up, says Koromoto, twisting
Speaker 1: a newly buffed blade in the sunlight as it pours
Speaker 1: through a window. But while they work to keep an
Speaker 1: h old art form alive, the partners are fighting in
Speaker 1: uphill battle. Demand for high dollar a katanas is waning,
Speaker 1: and the success of Nippon Genshosha depends on finding and
Speaker 1: developing a new generation of collectors, not just appealing to
Speaker 1: existing ones. To that end, the men have begun taking
Speaker 1: liberties with the hamon the pattern etched along the blade
Speaker 1: edge Traditionally, a smith designs a unique hman, often featuring
Speaker 1: landscape patterns tied to the area where the sword is manufactured.
Speaker 1: But says Kumoto, if someone from the United States once
Speaker 1: a scene from their front window, they can send a
Speaker 1: panoramic photo and we can reproduce it. They've also pioneered
Speaker 1: a method of encasing blades in a sealed, transparent resin
Speaker 1: block rather than a traditional wooden sheath. The idea, says Kumoto,
Speaker 1: was that this would allow people to appreciate Japanese swords
Speaker 1: safely and thus focus more on their beauty. What is
Speaker 1: the point of art if you can't see it in
Speaker 1: a country reverential of long held traditions, The swordsmiths are
Speaker 1: striking a delicate balance. It seems that ordinary people have
Speaker 1: fewer opportunities to come into contact with Japanese art, says Kuamoto,
Speaker 1: But today, as an art piece, swords have a place
Speaker 1: in modern culture. Next finding Tranquility in Transylvania in a
Speaker 1: corner of rural Romania a Byukalagwey of life is safeguardar
Speaker 1: by a community preserving its ancient ways and offering a
Speaker 1: template for a richer way of Living by Brett Martin.
Speaker 1: On a chilly twilight evening, three men sit around a
Speaker 1: wood table in the parsonage of a thirteenth century church
Speaker 1: in Transylvania. Outside our ducks be hives, and a shaggy
Speaker 1: white dog that we can hear barking at something in
Speaker 1: the growing dark. Warmed by a wood burning stove, the
Speaker 1: men sip tea and nibbles savory pretzel shaped cookies and
Speaker 1: talk about their home, Karashkobalva, Transylvania. Is there a better
Speaker 1: known place name and lesser known place, perhaps Timbuctoo. Even
Speaker 1: when all of Europe was wilder, Transylvania stood for its
Speaker 1: wildest edge. This is why Bramstokers ofw fit to use
Speaker 1: it as a setting for Dracula, despite never setting foot there.
Speaker 1: It's a place where Saxons, huns, Turks, Tartars, and a
Speaker 1: dozen less famous tribes are still talked about as if
Speaker 1: they may have passed through just last week. A place
Speaker 1: where the forests are still filled with bears. Now that Europe,
Speaker 1: for all its charms, can sometimes seem like a continent
Speaker 1: of mobile phone executives, it feels even more thrilling and
Speaker 1: unlikely to find oneself in a pocket as remote and
Speaker 1: in many ways untouched as this village in the valley
Speaker 1: of the Hamarod River, like about eighty five percent of
Speaker 1: the people who live in this region of rural central Romania.
Speaker 1: The men in the parsonage table speak in Hungarian. They
Speaker 1: are Zichhilles, ethnic Hungarians who have lived here for at
Speaker 1: least a thousand years. At the head of the table,
Speaker 1: with a short gray beard and bright, mischievous eyes, is
Speaker 1: a seventy year old Orbon Saba, the man whose vision
Speaker 1: is helping preserve this distant place even as the modern
Speaker 1: world presses at its borders. Orban and Hungarian family names
Speaker 1: come before given names, does so as the leader of
Speaker 1: the Kurbitusac, the village's governing body. It's the centuries old
Speaker 1: form of communal landownership and management that has helped make
Speaker 1: this place so singular. The Kuzbir tokos shagh It helps
Speaker 1: if you take a running start, manages the water, woods
Speaker 1: and pastures, splitting their use, resources and income among three
Speaker 1: hundred forty seven shareholders. Though time warn the system of
Speaker 1: governance is remarkably sturdy, Orbon points out, and capable of
Speaker 1: meeting the needs of the people here. When winter comes,
Speaker 1: he says, everybody has enough wood that it exists at
Speaker 1: all is a testament to Orban's vision. For the decades
Speaker 1: that Romania was under communist rule, the Kosburiserhagh was lost. Indeed,
Speaker 1: the infamous dictator Nikolai Chochescu aimed to wipe out places
Speaker 1: like Kokashafalva and their way of life. He failed. Communism fell,
Speaker 1: and the village regained communal control of some twenty seven
Speaker 1: hundred acres of land in two thousand. Key to the
Speaker 1: Korbusu Trazog restoration were written records of the intricate system
Speaker 1: through which land rights had been passed down for generations.
Speaker 1: Orban opens a leather valise and carefully lifts out a
Speaker 1: thick folder of papers. Each page contains two columns of
Speaker 1: neatly written names with numbers next to them. A nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six record of the shareholders of Karatschefalvas Horzobas Salkog.
Speaker 1: It was pages like these, hidden away in houses and
Speaker 1: buried in archives that aided the long legal fight of
Speaker 1: Orbon and other Kubritish Sokog leaders to reclaim their villages
Speaker 1: after Churchescu's overthrow in nineteen eighty nine. Orbon remembers sifting
Speaker 1: through a mountain of documents in a government office and
Speaker 1: coming upon the list. It was like thunder, he says,
Speaker 1: Not even in our deepest dreams have could we have
Speaker 1: hoped to restore what we had. Joining Orban at the
Speaker 1: table is Ampali Geza seventy five. He is a lay
Speaker 1: leader of the Unitarian Church. The younger man sitting next
Speaker 1: to him, Benedict Mihali, is its minister. Or Bond finds
Speaker 1: a page from a second list of names, this one
Speaker 1: from nineteen forty six, and points to line one hundred
Speaker 1: sixty five inscribed there is the name of Zempali's grandfather.
Speaker 1: When I look around the table, all three men are
Speaker 1: blinking back tears. Karsavalva Kushino in Romanian is tucked within
Speaker 1: rolling Tuscany like hills and swaths of deep forests, part
Speaker 1: of a string of villages, each marked by the needle
Speaker 1: like spire of a Unitarian church. His houses are topped
Speaker 1: with roofs of rust colored tile. Many feature so called
Speaker 1: Sekelli gates, elaborately carved wooden entrances that depicts Zekelli iconography
Speaker 1: and ruins, and are capped with structures reminiscent of a
Speaker 1: Japanese pagoda. From the courtyards within you can hear bleats
Speaker 1: of sheep and squawking of chickens. Most families do at
Speaker 1: least some subsistence farming. Electrical poles are topped by the
Speaker 1: doughnut shaped hats of storknests. One afternoon, I step aside
Speaker 1: as a raucous herd of cows is paraded down the
Speaker 1: middle of the street, spurred on by young men with
Speaker 1: sticks and shouts. It should also be noted that the
Speaker 1: village has faster internet and generally better roads than I
Speaker 1: do at home in New Orleans. Orban Saba commands obvious
Speaker 1: respect throughout the village, but is also considered something of
Speaker 1: an eccentric. The heads of other corbetous Saugjas can often
Speaker 1: be identified by their expensive cars and big shot attitudes,
Speaker 1: orbon drives, a beat up hatchback and dreams up projects.
Speaker 1: There is the traditional open air bath that he renovated
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen as a gathering place, complete with a
Speaker 1: medicinal herb garden and fire pit for making tea. Across
Speaker 1: the village, in the shadow of the forest is the
Speaker 1: sweet chestnut orchard, where he organizes an angul annual chestnut festival.
Speaker 1: And there's the Corbetushar Community Center, where on a Saturday afternoon,
Speaker 1: while I am there, the village gathers in traditional dress
Speaker 1: to enact a children's wedding in which a local girl
Speaker 1: and boy play bride and groom before a great feast.
Speaker 1: Orbon's car is in a constant state of reminding him
Speaker 1: to buckle his seat belt as he careenes down dirt
Speaker 1: roads from one place to the next. All of the projects,
Speaker 1: he says, are attempts to maintain the traditions of this
Speaker 1: place while also cautiously opening it to the possibilities of
Speaker 1: eco tourism. Orban often explains this careful balancing act through
Speaker 1: an emblem depicting the Zachelli sun and moon standing independent
Speaker 1: within the European Union's Circle of Stars. Above all, the
Speaker 1: Kurtzbetursag acts as a steward of the village's most important resource,
Speaker 1: the forest, which is both a source of crucial fuel
Speaker 1: as a few nervous nights feeding a guest house woodstove
Speaker 1: drives home, and fragile biodiversity. On a rainy day, I
Speaker 1: am taken into the woods by a hunter and ingenious
Speaker 1: tinker named Oksi Machas. He's invited me to tag along
Speaker 1: on his daily visit to check the three motion activated
Speaker 1: cameras he uses to monitor wildlife. We bounce up a
Speaker 1: down deeply rutted trails in an all terrain vehicle he
Speaker 1: has fashioned from an old land rover, and then hike
Speaker 1: in silence, trailed by a stout fox that Okshee has
Speaker 1: grown to know and has named Vuki. Aside from songbirds,
Speaker 1: Vuki is the only living thing we encounter. But back
Speaker 1: at Okshee's home, while my boots dry over the woodstove,
Speaker 1: we review the photos he has retrieved. They show deer,
Speaker 1: wild boars, all manner of small mammals, and many many bears.
Speaker 1: A shiver thinking of them all having been hidden around
Speaker 1: us as we moved through their woodland home. What especial
Speaker 1: here is that the community owns the land, says Za
Speaker 1: Kelly kinga RecA, a Unitarian minister several villages away. Nobody
Speaker 1: can get too wealthy that they make other people suffer.
Speaker 1: The irony, of course, is that such principles resemble nothing
Speaker 1: so much as those of communism. With a small sea
Speaker 1: we hate that word, but it's true. Ze Kelly admits,
Speaker 1: we already had that system for a thousand years. We
Speaker 1: didn't need them to come tell us. I met sze
Speaker 1: Kelly's home for the annual ritual of slaughtering a pig
Speaker 1: to be eaten over the course of the rest of
Speaker 1: the year. By the time I arrived, the animal's still
Speaker 1: steaming body has been splayed across a table outside. A
Speaker 1: round faced butcher deftly works at disassembling it. Prime cuts
Speaker 1: go into the brine, later to be smoked, while organs
Speaker 1: another oval head to a temporary sausage factory set up
Speaker 1: in the dining room. Excess sausages will be distributed among neighbors,
Speaker 1: who in turn will share their own surplus when the
Speaker 1: time comes. Skelly's husband, Zoltsava, a computer coder, distributes mourning
Speaker 1: shots of Pelinka, a homemade brandy they've prepared from plums.
Speaker 1: My generation is the last one that understands the meaning
Speaker 1: of butchering. The pegy laments, what is the meaning? I
Speaker 1: ask that you eat what you grow. He says that
Speaker 1: you know where it comes from, that you are connected
Speaker 1: on this Kelly's walls in many homes in the region
Speaker 1: hangs a map showing Transylvania as part of the Greater
Speaker 1: Austria Hungarian Empire. It's a good reminder that, as this
Speaker 1: place knows all too well, there is no hiding from
Speaker 1: the tides of history. Winters are getting warmer. The past
Speaker 1: two summers have been brought drought. A new Romanian nationalism
Speaker 1: is on the rise, potentially threatening the country's ethnic minorities.
Speaker 1: In the villages of the Homarud Valley you see children
Speaker 1: and older people, but few in between. Many adults have
Speaker 1: left in search of jobs, or pH ds, or just
Speaker 1: an easier life than farming. Zickell's Zoltz Kazaba has been
Speaker 1: forced to bring in Napoleese workers to help staff one
Speaker 1: of the small groceries he owns. In the face of
Speaker 1: all that, what Orbon Ksaba and the Corbitzer Cossac do
Speaker 1: is a model of tending one's own garden, an attempt
Speaker 1: to protect and sustain family, community and the gifts of
Speaker 1: this small corner of the planet that they know better
Speaker 1: than anybody else. At the parsonage table, Orbon packs up
Speaker 1: his stack of documents and places them carefully back in
Speaker 1: their valise. He pats it lovingly and puts it under
Speaker 1: his arm. It would be nice to know who is
Speaker 1: going to hold this next, he says. Next, how a
Speaker 1: super tiny crustacean makes life work in the Southern Ocean.
Speaker 1: Marine ecologist Kim Bernard is charting the huge impact of
Speaker 1: an Antarctic krill by Tristram Corton one night last December,
Speaker 1: National Geographic explorer Kim Bernard was stirring her earl gray
Speaker 1: tea in the galley of a research ship off the
Speaker 1: coast of Antarctica, preparing for a long night of observing
Speaker 1: a remotely operated vehicle as it surveyed the sea floor.
Speaker 1: When the Marina cologist looked up to a monitor showing
Speaker 1: a live video feed sent by the ro V from
Speaker 1: a depth of more than three thousand feet in the
Speaker 1: Southern Ocean's murky waters, something caught her attention. I see
Speaker 1: this tiny little thing come in on the right hand
Speaker 1: side of the screen and dart out, she said to
Speaker 1: the other scientists abroad. Probably aboard it probably looked like
Speaker 1: organic debris lofting down. But Bernard, forty six, has been
Speaker 1: studying krill for fifteen years and knows how the shrimp
Speaker 1: like crustaceans twirl in the water column and bolt backward.
Speaker 1: When startled. That familiar movement sent her running down two
Speaker 1: flights of stairs to the ship's control room. When she arrived,
Speaker 1: she saw the action on the sea floor being broadcast
Speaker 1: on a large bank of monitors, and she spouted a
Speaker 1: handful of individual krills spread out on a hydro thermal vent,
Speaker 1: a fissure in the ocean crust where hot magma and
Speaker 1: sea water meat and create a mineral rich environment that
Speaker 1: attracts a host of organisms. For Bernard, a professor of
Speaker 1: biological oceanography at Oregon State University, finding krill here represented
Speaker 1: a momentous discovery. I kind of lost my mind, she recalled.
Speaker 1: It was the first time the animal had been observed
Speaker 1: on a vent Antarctic Krill are a keystone species that
Speaker 1: allows everything else in the Southern Ocean to flourish. If
Speaker 1: Bernard could learn more about their habitat on the sea floor,
Speaker 1: her research could inform our understanding of virtually every predator
Speaker 1: on this hard to reach continent, from emperor penguins to
Speaker 1: blue whales. Any new behavior from such a foundational animal
Speaker 1: has the potential to effect the entire food above it.
Speaker 1: That night, in the control room aboard the research vessel
Speaker 1: from Schmidt Ocean Institute. Bernard soon realized all the krill
Speaker 1: were females carrying eggs. The species usually release eggs higher
Speaker 1: in the water column. What makes it worth the risk
Speaker 1: to travel so far at this stage in reproduction? Were
Speaker 1: they feeding on the bacteria covering the vent? She asked
Speaker 1: the operator to use the rob's special suction arm and
Speaker 1: gather a few of the crustaceans. This was also a first.
Speaker 1: Bernard isn't aware of any researchers who have collected specimens
Speaker 1: at that depth. She has since sent stomach and tissue
Speaker 1: samples out for analysis. Bernard's work on the expedition, which
Speaker 1: was supported by the National Geographic Society and Role's Perpetual
Speaker 1: Planet Expeditions, is part of an ambitious project that sending
Speaker 1: nearly two dozen scientists to all five oceans. Their efforts
Speaker 1: will be the subject of a series of stories in
Speaker 1: National Geographic as they searched for new insights, like say,
Speaker 1: the presence of krill in under explored places in Antarctica.
Speaker 1: The species is more than just a vital part of
Speaker 1: the food chain. Krill are also a carbon sink, eating
Speaker 1: phytoplankton that have absorbed CO two and then excreting pellets
Speaker 1: to the seafloor, where it can take thousands of years
Speaker 1: for the absorbed carbon to resurface. However, there are new
Speaker 1: pressures on the species from both humans and climate change.
Speaker 1: Krill are increasingly harvested as aquaculture feed, and the animal's
Speaker 1: oil is highly sought after as a dietary supplement. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: as sea ice continues to melt, larval krill are losing
Speaker 1: an important habitat where they can hide from predators, find food,
Speaker 1: and develop into adults. Bernard hopes her ongoing research and
Speaker 1: future insights from this discovery will protect this tiny animal
Speaker 1: that so much life relies on. There's a thriving mass
Speaker 1: of life down there, she said, and all up it
Speaker 1: depends on krill. Next, seeing a glacier through a prehistoric lens,
Speaker 1: a photographer uses Arctic ice and a unique technique to
Speaker 1: offer a fresh perspective on a world transformed by climate change.
Speaker 1: Glacial ice is formed from snow accumulating and compacting over millennia.
Speaker 1: As the pressure increases, crystalline layers are smoothed into one
Speaker 1: of the clearest substances found in nature. That alchemy and
Speaker 1: the knowledge that climate change is causing glaciers to rapidly
Speaker 1: disappear inspired forty four year old artist Tristan Duke to
Speaker 1: create a photo lens out of glacial ice. I just
Speaker 1: felt this real sense of urgency, Duke says he wanted
Speaker 1: to capture a glacier through its own eyes. He puts
Speaker 1: it like a self portrait. In the spring of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, Duke called dozens of pounds of gear to Spalbarred, Norway,
Speaker 1: including a giant tent camera that he designed himself, and
Speaker 1: molds for shaping the ice into lenses. The tent functioned
Speaker 1: like a camera of skura. Duke would place a palm
Speaker 1: sized piece of ice in a hole in the canvas,
Speaker 1: projecting an image of the landscape inside the tent that
Speaker 1: would then be captured on a forty two by one
Speaker 1: hundred inch negative. Some of the photographs were clearer than
Speaker 1: he expected, but as the lenses melted, the accumulation of
Speaker 1: water produced its own effect. People have told me that
Speaker 1: it looks like the world blurred through tears, he says.
Speaker 1: To contain contact, to contrast this arctic sublime against a
Speaker 1: world on fire, he traveled through the American West to
Speaker 1: document wildfires and energy infrastructure with lenses created from locally
Speaker 1: sourced ice. He wants to invert the romantic gaze. We
Speaker 1: see a sort of fragile nature bearing witness to the
Speaker 1: unbridled and cataclysmic power of the human world. This article
Speaker 1: by Megan Brown next The City of seven hundred Languages.
Speaker 1: It's been four hundred years since New York City was
Speaker 1: founded as the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam. Back then,
Speaker 1: some thirty European and native languages were spoken there. To day,
Speaker 1: that number surpasses seven hundred. That's more than ten percent
Speaker 1: of the world's nearly seven thousand languages, making New York
Speaker 1: the most linguistically diverse city to ever exist. Can it
Speaker 1: stay that way? A four hundred years of immigration loaded
Speaker 1: New York with languages before Europeans arrived, and estimated fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand Lennapis speakers may have lived in Lenapehuking, a region
Speaker 1: that includes present day New York City. In sixteen twenty four,
Speaker 1: the Dutch West India Company founded the city of New
Speaker 1: Amsterdam on the site. By the mid sixteen seventies, it
Speaker 1: was under British control and would be until the American Revolution.
Speaker 1: Built on waves of immigration, it is now home to
Speaker 1: the largest foreign born population of any major metropolitan in
Speaker 1: the world. Those eras of immigration are envisioned here as
Speaker 1: the rings of a growing tree. Each dot represents one
Speaker 1: hundred immigrants each ring a decade. The result is a
Speaker 1: snapshot of New York City's diverse ethnic populations over time,
Speaker 1: from just a few hundred European settlers to three point
Speaker 1: two million immigrants today, most from Latin America and Asia.
Speaker 1: What New York City loses when languages vanish? By Ross Perlin.
Speaker 1: Seca is an endangered language originally spoken in five villages
Speaker 1: of northern Nepal, but its future may depend on a
Speaker 1: handful of vertical villages apartment buildings in the middle of Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: New York. How did a little documented, oral only language
Speaker 1: used by no more than seven hundred people in the
Speaker 1: High Himalaya come to the concrete jungle? Rasmena Gourung in
Speaker 1: her twenties, one of Seka's youngest speakers, learned the language
Speaker 1: from her grandmother in the village, but soon to the
Speaker 1: country's capital, Katmandu, and eventually New York, where she estimates
Speaker 1: at least a quarter of her pupil have ended up here.
Speaker 1: They joined speakers of dozens of other endangered languages from
Speaker 1: across the Himalaya, all forming new communities while getting by
Speaker 1: in an ever evolving mix of Nepali, Tibetan, English, and
Speaker 1: their own embattled mother tongues. But New York City, the
Speaker 1: most linguistically diverse city in the history of the world,
Speaker 1: may be hitting peak diversity. Its seven hundred plus languages
Speaker 1: represent over ten percent of the global total. Though largely indivisible,
Speaker 1: invisible and inaudible to outsiders, the city's languages are from
Speaker 1: all over. Many immigrants have arrived in just the past
Speaker 1: few decades from linguistic hotspots such as the Himalaya, West Africa,
Speaker 1: insular Southeast Asia, and heavily indigenous zones of Latin America. Today, however,
Speaker 1: many of the forces that brought people together are beginning
Speaker 1: to pull them upon art Given accelerating language laws even
Speaker 1: in the language's home lands, threats to immigration, and the
Speaker 1: rising costs of city life, time may be running out.
Speaker 1: The remarkable linguistic convergence in New York and similar cities
Speaker 1: could vanish fast before there has even been time to
Speaker 1: document or support it. This urgency is what drives the
Speaker 1: work of the Endangered Language Alliance, the organization i Codirect,
Speaker 1: which has started to map this landscape. At stake is
Speaker 1: an unprecedented set of cultural, scientific, educational, and even economic possibilities.
Speaker 1: Never before have linguists and speakers been so well positioned
Speaker 1: to document languages from which few, if any, records exists,
Speaker 1: while also pushing for their maintenance and revitalization. This concludes
Speaker 1: readings from National Geographic Magazine for to day. Your reader
Speaker 1: has been Marsha. Thank you for listening, Keep on listening
Speaker 1: and have a great day.