Lists of endangered languages facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Language Endangerment Status
by UNESCO Atlas of the World’s
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| Extinct (EX) | |
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| Endangered | |
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Other categories |
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Related topics
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 UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger categories |
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Lists of endangered languages are mainly based on the definitions used by UNESCO. In order to be listed, a language must be classified as "endangered" in a cited academic source. Researchers have concluded that in less than one hundred years, almost half of the languages known today will be lost forever. The lists are organized by region.
Africa
- List of endangered languages in Africa
Asia
- List of endangered languages in Asia
- List of endangered languages in Bangladesh
- List of endangered languages in China
- List of endangered languages in India
- List of endangered languages in Indonesia
- List of endangered languages in Nepal
Europe
- List of endangered languages in Europe
- List of endangered languages in Russia
North America
- List of endangered languages in North America
- List of endangered languages in Canada
- List of endangered languages in Mexico
- List of endangered languages in the United States
Central and South America
- List of endangered languages in Central America
- List of endangered languages in South America
- List of endangered languages in Brazil
- List of endangered languages in Colombia
Oceania
- List of Australian Aboriginal languages
- List of endangered languages in Papua New Guinea
- List of endangered languages of Oceania
Discussion
SIL Ethnologue (2005) lists 473 out of 6,909 living languages inventorized (6.8%) as "nearly extinct", indicating cases where "only a few elderly speakers are still living"; this figure dropped to 6.1% as of 2013.
When judging whether or not a language is endangered, the number of speakers is less important than their age distribution. There are languages in Indonesia reported with as many as two million native speakers alive now, but all of advancing age, with little or no transmission to the young. On the other hand, while there are only 30,000 Ladin speakers left, almost all children still learn it as their mother tongue; thus Ladin is not currently endangered. Similarly, the Hawaiian language has only about 1,000 speakers, but it has stabilized at this number, and there is now school instruction in the language, from preschool through the 12th grade; thus the language is classified as merely vulnerable.
While there are somewhere around six or seven thousand languages on Earth today, about half of them have fewer than about 3,000 speakers. Experts predict that even in a conservative scenario, about half of today's languages will become extinct within the next 50 to 100 years.
See also
- Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
- Language family
- Language policy
- Linguistic rights
- Lists of extinct languages
- List of languages by time of extinction
- List of revived languages
- Minority language
