There are many dying languages. But at least one has recently been born, created by children living in a remote village in northern Australia, according to Carmel O’shannessy, a linguist at the University of Michigan.

The language, called Light Warlpiri, is spoken only by people under 35 in Lajamanu, a village of about 700 people in northern Australia. In all, about 350 people speak the language as their native tongue.

Since many of the first speakers of this language are still alive, Dr. O’shannessy has been able to document a “new” language in the very early period of its existence.

Everyone in Lajamanu speaks “strong” Warlpiri, an aboriginal(澳大利亚土著的）language unrelated to English and shared with about 4,000 people in several Australian villages. Many also speak Kriol, an English-based creole(混合语) that is widely spoken in northern Australia among aboriginal people of many native languages.

Many words in Light Warlpiri originate from English or Kriol. But light Warlpiri is not simply a combination of words from different languages.

Dr. O’shannessy offers this example: Nganimpa-ng gen wi-m si-m worm mai naus-ria. (We also saw worms at my house.)

It is easy to see nouns come from English. But the -ria ending on aus (house) means “in” or “at,” and it comes from Warlpiri. The -m ending on the verb “si” (see) indicated that event is wither happening now or has happened, a “present or past but not future” tense that does not exist in English or Warlpiri. This is a way of talking so different from either Warlpiri or Kriol that it is considered a new language.

The development of the language, Dr. O’shannessy says, began with parents using baby talk with their children in a combination of the three languages. But the children took that language as their native tongue by adding some changes, especially in the use of verb structures, which are not present in any of the source languages. “After children created the new system, it has since become a marker of their identity as being young Warlpiri from the Lajamanu Community,” Dr. O’shannessy says.

The Internet is changing the way we communicate. LOL, awks, amazeballs, BRB, the use of emoji and emoticon — and even writing facial expressions such as ‘sad face’ — have all become standard in digital communications. So ingrained, in fact, that they’re changing the way we write and even talk.

“People are becoming less concerned with grammar, spelling and sentence structure, and more concerned with getting their message across,” says Gavin Hammar, CEO and founder of Sendible.

There’s no doubt that the consumption of abbreviated digital content is having a huge effect on language. “Over the last five years attention spans have shortened considerably, which is reflected in the contracted forms of language we see in social media,” says Robin Kermode, founder of communications coaching consultancy Zone2.

However, some think that the internet has made us better communicators since we increasingly use much more streamlined language. “To get a message across using Twitter for example, it must be concise and must conform to the tone used there, which includes abbreviations, acronyms.”

The fastest growing ‘new language’ in the world is emoticons (faces) and emojis (images of objects, which hail from Japan), which are one of the biggest changes caused by digital communications. “Facial expressions, visual presence and body language have always been vital to being a confident speaker, but now emojis are blurring the lines between verbal and written communication,” thinks Kermode, who adds that cavemen had early versions of emojis on the sides of their caves. “Pictures, cartoons or emojis are ‘shortcuts’ so we can be clear about what our message really means.”

If you mainly use emojis, why not get a keyboard-based around smiley faces and cartoon icons? That’s exactly what Swyft Media recently created, and while it’s more of a PR stunt the keyboards of the future will probably contain at least some emojis.

Emoticons and emojis are arguably more meaningful than slang and shorthand, which can be too easily misunderstood. “I once witnessed a girl being dumped in a text, which consisted of a message with just five letters, U R MY X’ — linguistically economic, but emotionally harsh,” says Kermode. Trouble is, the sender had actually meant YOU ARE MINE. X’. “If he’d added three emojis — like a smiley face, a heart and a wedding ring, he might now be happily married!”

The same goes for a statement such as “I NEED TO SPEAK TO YOU RIGHT NOW”, which needs a qualifying emoticon or emoji to give it meaning. “It could signal an angry meeting or a passionate meeting but add a coffee cup, a big smiley face or an angry face and it becomes clear what’s really going on,” says Kermode.

They may be derided by traditionalists, but emoticons and emojis used to describe mood are the body language add-on that the written word has always lacked. In most instances, these icons represent language evolution and progress, not regression.

There are close to 7, 000 languages spoken on Earth. However, it’s estimated that by the end of this century, up to 50% of them may be lost.

It’s commonly thought that majority languages tend to be valued for being useful and for promoting progress, while minority languages are seen as barriers to progress, and the value placed on them is seen mainly as sentimental (感情用事的). But is sentimentality really the only motivation for preserving language diversity?

Speakers of endangered languages often live in remote areas with unique landform. It is quite common for these languages to distinguish between hundreds more types of plants and animals than those known to modern science. For example, in Southeast Asia, some tribes have discovered the medicinal properties of over sixty-five hundred plant species. This has led to many of landmark achievements in medicine.

It was once believed that the limits of one’s language defined the limits of one’s thought. This theory, called the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis (假说), has been largely rejected in favor of the improved version, which assumes that the language we speak does not set the limits of our thoughts, but it does direct our focus in certain ways. For example, English is a tense-based language. It’s nearly impossible to talk about doing something without specifying the time — i. e. I went to the party(past), I’m going to the party(present), or I’ll go to the party (future). This differs from Chinese, where it’s perfectly reasonable to say, “I go to the party” without defining the “when”. Thus, part of the richness of language is that it allows us to organize the world in so many unique ways.

Some languages categorize the world in ways so different from our own that they are difficult to conceptualize (概念化). The United States employed native Navajo speakers to create a system of message coding during the Second World War. The Japanese were never able to break it, and the “code talkers” are often cited today as having helped decide the outcome of the war.

As we’ve already seen, minority languages are valuable for many practical reasons. In conclusion, I’d say the short answer is yes — dying languages are certainly worth saving!