Vanishing Languages

The Earth’s population of seven billion people speaks roughly 7,000 languages, a statistic that would seem to offer each living language a healthy one million speakers, if things were equitable. In language, as in life, things aren’t. Seventy-eight percent of the world’s population speaks the 85 largest languages, while the 3,500 smallest languages share a mere 8.25 million speakers.

There are roughly 7,000 languages in the world, but one language dies every two weeks. Nearly half of the extant languages could disappear within the next century. (via)