An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead language".
Today, the voices of more than 7,000 languages resound across our planet every moment, but about 2,900 or 41% are endangered.
What does it mean to say a language is endangered? An endangered language is one that is likely to become extinct in the near future. Many languages are failing out of use and being replaced by others that are more widely used in the region or nation, such as English in the U.S. or Spanish in Mexico.
With the recent extinction of Aka-Cari (or Sare), Aka-Jeru is now the only remaining language of the 10 Great Andamanese tribes – and it is believed only three native speakers remain as of 2020. This means the entire language family will soon perish, as will the ability to deeply study the language.
What is the first language? Sumerian can be considered the first language in the world, according to Mondly. The oldest proof of written Sumerian was found on the Kish tablet in today's Iraq, dating back to approximately 3500 BC.
A new study found that of the world's 7,000 recognised languages, around half are currently endangered. Nearly a fifth of the world's languages could disappear by the end of the century, a new study warns.
Kawishana. Spoken near the Japura River in Brazil, Kawishana (Kaixana) was once a popular language utilized by many. The numbers began dwindling, eventually dropping down to 200. Now, there remains only one documented person still able to speak the language.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
Italian is the Fastest Dying Language in the United States | Fortune.
Most languages, though, die out gradually as successive generations of speakers become bilingual and then begin to lose proficiency in their traditional languages. This often happens when speakers seek to learn a more-prestigious language in order to gain social and economic advantages or to avoid discrimination.
Linguists point to how the loss of languages is worsened by climate change. As temperatures rise, so does the rate at which crucial elements of indigenous culture become extinct across the world. It is calculated that, at the current rate, around 90% of all languages will disappear in the next 100 years.
Every two weeks a language dies with its last speaker, 50 to 90 percent of them are predicted to disappear by the next century. (Read about what happens when a language dies.) In rare cases, political will and a thorough written record can resurrect a lost language.
Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near the Greek-Albanian border.
English is still the number one most spoken language around the world with about 370 million native speakers and almost 1 billion second-language speakers. It is still the most international language and it is the language of the Internet, business, and science. To be blunt, English is far from dying.
The language is currently spoken by well over 100 million people. Though the native population is decreasing due to aging, with increased immigration to Japan the population will probably end up staying at least stable.
The languages that takes the number 1 place in our list and therefore, the most spoken first language in the world is, by far, Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin is only one of the many Chinese dialects spoken in China. However, it is officially considered the Official Language of the People's Republic of China.
Ithkuil is an experimental constructed language created by John Quijada. It is designed to express more profound levels of human cognition briefly yet overtly and clearly, particularly about human categorization. It is a cross between an a priori philosophical and a logical language.
According to Ethnologue, English is the most-spoken language in the world including native and non-native speakers. Like Latin or Greek at the time, English has become the world's common language. It is the default language in international business, tourism, technology, and much more.
Both Old English and Old Norse had gender, but sometimes their genders contradicted each other. In order to simplify communication, gendered nouns simply disappeared. Of course, gender did not disappear entirely. We still have gendered pronouns in English: he, she and it.
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?
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.