Campagnolo Alphabet Added To UNESCO List Of Endangered Languages

• Posted on 5 March 2025
• By The Crank Set
• Posted in Parody, Satire, The Crank
• 0

PARIS, FRANCE - As part of its annual general meeting, UNESCO announced this week that the Campagnolo Alphabet would be added to its list of threatened or endangered languages, and included in the latest edition of the World Atlas of Languages in Danger. Once a widely-distributed “common language” or lingua franca, Campagnolo is now estimated to have fewer than 5000 fluent speakers remaining, many of them quite elderly. 

“As recently as 30 years ago, you could walk into a bike shop in nearly any part of the world, and hear the distinctive sounds of Campagnolo being used to communicate among staff and customers alike,” University of Chicago linguistics professor Salikoko Mufwene said in an official statement from the ad-hoc committee on languages, “but sadly, these days it’s more likely to be Campagnolo No Longer Spoken Here.” 

A Romance language originating in the Dolomite mountain range, Campagnolo is known primarily for the scale and complexity of its bicycle-specific vocabulary, as well as for its unique lexicographic system, which is closer to Egyptian hieroglyphs or Summerian cuneiform than to the Latin alphabet.  “If we do not take steps now to preserve Campagnolo and its rich heritage,” continued Prof. Mufwene, “it could easily go the way of dead languages such as Pictish, Ancient Etruscan, or Simplex.”

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