Dying words.

PositionLANGUAGE - Extinction of languages - Brief article

There are nearly 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, but experts say almost half are in danger of extinction. One language vanishes about every two weeks, with the death of the sole surviving speaker. According to K. David Harrison, a linguist at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, 83 languages with "global influence" are spoken by 80 percent of the world's people. More than half the endangered tongues have no written form, says Harrison, and are "vulnerable to loss and being forgotten." He and other researchers are traveling the globe as...

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