Why do languages die
There are more than 7, 000 languages. The number of people speaking English, Spanish and Mandarin continues to grow, but every fortnight a langauge will disappear forever. The Economist s language expert Lane Greene explains why. Click here to subscribe to The Economist on YouTube: Irankarapte iishu Dydh Da I don t speak those languages. In fact very few people do. They re used only by a handful of people, and all those languages are in danger of extinction. There are more than 7, 000 languages spoken in the world today but about 1, 3 of those have fewer than 1000 speakers and according to UNESCO more than 40 of those languages are in danger of extinction. In fact every fortnight one of the world s languages disappears forever. When you say dead language many people think of Latin, but Latin actually never died it s been spoken continuously since the time of the Caesars, but it changed very gradually over 2, 000 years until it became Fre br, br,
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