Disappearing Languages

“The number of ‘living’ languages spoken in the world is dwindling faster than the decline in the planet’s wildlife,” reports a study cited in The Independent of London. Linguists estimate that worldwide, 6,809 languages are spoken, 90 percent of them by fewer than 100,000 people. Languages with fewer than 50 speakers number 357, while 46 are known to have just one native speaker. Colonization has caused the disappearance of 52 of the 176 languages of North American tribes, and 31 of the 235 Aboriginal languages of Australia. Professor Bill Sutherland of the University of East Anglia, England, said that when threats to languages were compared in the same way as threats to animals, a substantially higher proportion of languages could be classified as “critically endangered,” “endangered,” or “vulnerable.” He adds: “The threats to birds and mammals are well known but it turns out that languages are far more threatened.”