Nearly 200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal go extinct each day. While this figure is shocking, it is not surprising.
The fact that one spoken language goes extinct every two weeks may be more so.
New statistics from the United Nations reveal the astonishing rate at which we are losing languages.
In 8,000BC humans spoke as many as 20,000 dialects.
Today, just 6,500 remain in use and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) lists more than 2,000 of them as vulnerable or endangered.
About 97 per cent of the world’s population speaks four per cent of its languages.
Three per cent speaks the remaining 96 per cent of them.
This means that when small communities stop speaking their native tongue, it has a disproportionate effect of the diversity of language.
‘Languages are humankind’s principle tools for interacting and for expressing ideas, emotions, knowledge, memories and values,’ says a UNESCO report.
‘Languages are also primary vehicles of cultural expressions and intangible cultural heritage, essential to the identity of individuals and groups. Safeguarding endangered language is thus a crucial task in maintaining cultural diversity worldwide.’
But how does a language die? Sometimes it might be because the people that speak it have died. Natural disaster, disease or war are all contenders, told MNN.
New statistics from the United Nations reveal the astonishing rate at which we are losing languages
In other cases people may just decide to stop speaking indigenous language.
In 1932 speakers of the Lenca and Cacaopera languages in El Salvador abandoned them after a massacre in which Salvadorean troops killed tens of thousands of indigenous people.
Of late, many regional languages have been replaced by global languages like English, Spanish, French and Mandarin.
These are seven languages that are on the brink.
1. Jedek
Spoken by just 280 people in a small village on the Malay Peninsula, Jedek was discovered only last year. Before then it had never been documented.
‘Jedek is not a language spoken by an unknown tribe in the jungle, as you would perhaps imagine, but in a village previously studied by anthropologists,’ Niclas Burenhult, associate professor of general linguistics at Lund University, said in a statement.
The hunter-gatherer people do not language to describe violent acts, nor do they have the verbal tools to describe competition between children. Occupations and words like buy, sell and steal are all absent.
However, Jedek does include words to describe sharing and exchanging.
2. Aka
An Indian language, Aka is spoke only in Arunachal Pradesh, the nation’s north-easternmost state.
The town in which it is spoke is reachable only by driving five-and-a-half hours into the jungle.
But the dialect is dying. The village’s youngsters now choose to learn Hindi, India’s dominant language, which they hear on TV, radio and in popular music.
Now, there are just a few thousand Aka speakers left.
3. Icelandic
Odd, you might think, that an entire nation’s language is slowly seeping away.
But Iceland’s ancient language is indeed doing just that. Icelandic has been around since the 13th century and is best known for its incredibly complex grammatical structure.
Sadly, it appears the internet and social media are sounding its death knell.
Younger Icelanders are speaking more English because much of the culture they consume through the web comes in English.
‘It’s called ‘digital minoritization’,’ said University of Iceland Professor Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson told The Guardian.
‘When a majority language in the real world becomes a minority language in the digital world.’
4. Marshallese
The largest population of Marshallese immigrants is in Springdale, Arkansas (above: three girls sing in the endangered language)
Environmental factors can also kill off a language.
On the Marshall Islands, people are leaving. On the coral atolls that lie between Australia and Hawaii life is becoming increasingly tough.
Climate change and rising sea levels have had a tangible effect on its inhabitants and many are moving.
Strangely, the largest population of Marshallese immigrants is in Springdale, Arkansas.
But when communities immigrate they tend to lose their language within a few generations.
5. Wintu
According to UNESCO there is only one fluent Wintu speaker left alive, and just a handful or semi-speakers (above: Wintu tribe sing together)
Before the arrival of Europeans in North America the Wintu tribe numbered about 14,000.
Now, ravaged by foreign disease and violent settlers this number has dropped to just 150.
According to UNESCO there is only one fluent Wintu speaker left alive, and just a handful or semi-speakers.
Wintu is very close to vanishing completely.
6. Tofa
UNESCO estimates that there are 40 Tofa speakers left. Thuis Siberian language is spoken only in Russia’s extremely remote Irkutsk Oblast by the Tofalars.
Three villages in the Easter Sayan mountain range use the language, and reaching those village is extremely difficult.
This isolation has helped to preserve the language, which so far has remained commonly used among the townsfolk.
However, almost of the children of the town attend boarding school and therefore grow up speaking Russian, according to Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine.
Given that almost none of the new generation is learning Tofa, this will likely be its end.
7. Elfdalian
Elfdalian (above) is the closest thing to Old Norse, the language of the Vikings, that exists today
Elfdalian is the closest thing to Old Norse, the language of the Vikings, that exists today.
It is only spoken by the people of Älvdalen in a remote part of Sweden.
The North Germanic language spoken by up to 3,000 people and was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and the nation’s foreign territories.
Of late, many of its speakers have veered towards using Swedish and few youngsters are being taught the language.
However, a ray of hope came in March 2016 when the Älvdalen City Council decided that all kindergarten would be taught in Elfdalian, therefore passing on the language to all of the area’s young. Maybe, it seems, the language will survive.