In this issue we note the passing of the last native-born speaker of Livonian – not on her native soil in Latvia, but in a retirement home in Canada, with no-one to talk to in the language. What is interesting about the terse newspaper report is the assumptions that journalists make about endangered languages. We reproduce some of the discussion in a linguists’ blog about those assumptions. Livonian is a subject dear to your editor’s heart, but the press treatment of this issue of dying languages, in Britain at any rate, applies to any language that loses its last native-born speaker.

Even languages at the safer end of the scale of endangerment can find themselves threatened by hostile legislation. You might have thought that the future Catalan is assured and that that language is one of the success stories of Europe, but to judge from an appeal printed in this issue from a society of prominent Catalan linguists, the language is under threat again, now from stealthy legislation to redefine its nature, status and territory.

This journal of record is not meant to be merely a digest of already printed and posted articles, but a forum for discussion of endangered languages. May I again appeal for more original articles from our body of talented and knowledgeable subscribers – whether a book review, a report of an event of interest to us all, or an article on a language on which you’re working – maybe your fieldwork experiences, unexpected findings – the sort of thing that doesn’t find its way into the more technical linguistic journals.

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