Today, the voices of more than 7,000 languages resound across our planet every moment, but about 2,900 or 41% are endangered. At current rates, about 90% of all languages will become extinct in the next 100 years.
By 2050, some estimate that 90% of the currently spoken languages will have gone forever. And, rather like climate change, this isn't an inevitable erosion over time. Of the 420 language families known to have existed, a quarter have already gone – 90% of those in the past 60 years.
Many of the languages spoken today are in constant extinction. Linguistic predictions say that of 6,000 languages that are globally spoken today, around 600 of them after 100 years will have simplified versions or will not exist at all.
Co-author Professor Lindell Bromham said that of the world's 7,000 recognized languages, around half are currently endangered: “We found that without immediate intervention, language loss could triple in the next 40 years. And by the end of this century, 1,500 languages could cease to be spoken.”
Njerep is the rarest language that has been declared extinct by experts. It is native to Cameroon and does not have more than five speakers today. These speakers are not fluent in the tongue.
Every 40 days a language dies. This “catastrophic” loss is being amplified by the climate crisis, according to linguists. If nothing is done, conservative estimates suggest that half of all the 7,000 languages currently spoken will be extinct by the end of the century.
It is crucial to understand that languages represent cultures. This reiterates the need to protect endangered languages. Without its language, a culture can die out quickly and become lost to time. Above all, preserving languages is as critical as preserving diverse wildlife to maintain a balanced ecosystem.
A language becomes dormant or extinct when no one can speak it anymore. It becomes doomed when the latest generation of children no longer speak the language. From that point, the last fluent speakers of the language, in their late teens or early twenties, give the language about 75 more years of life.
250 First Languages were spoken around Australia at the time of British invasion. There were many dialects within each language group. Today, only 120 First Languages are still spoken.
Contrary to what many people may believe, the answer to our very query of will the English Language eventually become extinct is as straightforward and definitive as it can be. “Yes,” the English Language we know today, the current universal language of the world will die out in the future.
1. English (1,452 million speakers) According to Ethnologue, English is the most-spoken language in the world including native and non-native speakers.
Language grows and continuously adapts, evolving as we come up with better words that reflect our society or culture. In particular, it mirrors the complexity with which our lives intertwine with technology. When our technology evolves quicker than ever before, so too does our language.
Types of Language Change
Language is always changing. We've seen that language changes across space and across social group. Language also varies across time. Generation by generation, pronunciations evolve, new words are borrowed or invented, the meaning of old words drifts, and morphology develops or decays.
Mandarin. Mandarin is likely to be the most spoken language in 2050 because of its vast number of speakers. The economic influence of China will also prove vital for the continued use and spread of Chinese languages around the world.
The revival of the Hebrew language is the only truly successful example of a revived dead language. The Hebrew language survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy and rabbinic literature.
Much like learning a modern language, learning a dead language also has many of the cognitive benefits that language learning offers us, from an improved memory and decision making skills to a decreased risk of dementia. Finally, learning a dead language can actually help you to learn many modern languages.
"Losing these languages means losing a great part of our human heritage, because languages are much more than spoken or written words and sentences – they are also the means through which cultures, knowledge, and traditions are preserved and transmitted between generations," said Mona Rishmawi, Chief of the rule of law ...
One language dies every 14 days. By the next century nearly half of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken on Earth will likely disappear, as communities abandon native tongues in favor of English, Mandarin, or Spanish. What is lost when a language goes silent?
While some people can remember their native language after years, even decades of not speaking or hearing it, many others begin to lose fluency after only 3-5 years.
Paakantyi. This Australian Aboriginal language is still spoken in regions alongside the Darling River, but only by a few people.
Dumi is the world's least spoken language and one of the rarest.
And The World's Weirdest Language Is…
Chalcatongo Mixtec! This language, spoken by 6,000 people in Oaxaca, Mexico, ranked first in the weirdest language shortlist. Chalcatongo Mixtec, also known as San Miguel el Grande Mixtec, is a verb-initial tonal language.