Coexistence of Languages is possible

In this work we study the dynamics of language competition. In Abrams and Strogatz [Modeling the dynamics Of language death, Nature 424 (2003) 900], the extinction of one of the competing languages is predicted, although in some case the coexistence occurs. The preservation of both languages was explained by Patriarca and Leppanen [Modeling language competition, Physica A 338 (2004) 296] by introducing the existence of two disjoint zones where each language is predominant. However, their results cannot explain the survivance of both languages in only one zone of competition. In this work we discuss their results and propose a new alternative model of Lotka-Volterra type in order to explain the coexistence of two languages. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.