There are around 7,000 languages spoken in the world, but that number is shrinking. Unesco estimates that half could disappear by the end of the century. So how are languages lost, and what does that mean for the people who speak them?
Despite the thousands of languages, just 20 or so dominate the global linguistic landscape. Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Japanese, Javanese, German, Wu, Korean, French, Telugu, Marathi, Turkish, Tamil, Vietnamese and Urdu are the mother tongues of more than 3 billion people.
The vast majority of languages on Earth – 95 percent – are actually spoken by just 5 percent of the world's population. And these are the ones that are in danger – threatened with extinction because they are often based solely on oral tradition and struggle to spread or survive beyond their region or ethnic group of origin.
The most alarming studies say that a language disappears every fortnight, while others, more measured, estimate it to be one every three months.
Unesco, the UN agency for culture and education, estimates that if nothing is done, half of all languages could vanish by 2100.
This warning comes from its World Atlas of Languages. The atlas is based on data from national governments, universities and language communities. It shows the type, structure, situation and usage of every known language.
The scale of the problem
Unesco considers a language to be "endangered" when it is "no longer taught to children as a mother tongue at home" and the youngest speakers are their parents.
It is "seriously endangered" when it is only spoken by grandparents, and parents understand it "but no longer use it with their children or among themselves".
The last stage before extinction – what Unesco calls the "critical situation" stage – is when "the last speakers are from the great-grandparents' generation" and the language is "not used in everyday life".
The research centre for linguistic intelligence, Ethnologue, uses another tool in its research – the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale, which uses 13 stages to determine the status of a language.
But its conclusions are similar to those of Unesco: 3,170 languages (44 percent of those in use) are currently endangered. It says a language is under threat as soon as "users begin to transmit a more dominant language to the children of the community".
The Asia-Pacific region is the most affected, with Indonesian and New Guinean languages at the top of the list, followed by Aboriginal languages in Australia. The Americas too rank high, with many indigenous languages in danger of extinction in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil.
Africa is the third most affected continent, particularly Nigeria and Cameroon. But Europe is not immune to the phenomenon, with Russia notably affected.
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Linguistic domination
European colonisation is one of the major factors that explains the trend, having "led to the deaths of millions of indigenous people, disrupting the transmission of languages from one generation to the next," says linguist Evangelia Adamou, senior researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).
Massacres and epidemics led to the disappearance of entire peoples, and colonial policies added insult to injury by "devaluing indigenous languages" and "forcing children to move away from their families", she continued.
The residential schools set up by colonisers – such as those in Canada, the United States and Australia – were designed to separate indigenous children from their parents and cut them off from their mother tongue.
Local languages found it very difficult to withstand the pressure from colonial languages and racist and discriminatory policies.
The formation of nation states has also contributed significantly to these disappearances. The idea of a single people speaking the same language, united under the same flag and the same values, has led in many countries "to monolingual mass education, usually in the national language," said Adamou, leading to "the linguistic displacement of minority languages towards the dominant languages".
This is how Breton, Basque and many of the languages of New Caledonia and French Guiana have come close to disappearing.
In France and elsewhere, the lack of recognition of traditional languages has led and continues to lead to their abandonment in favour of languages considered more "prestigious" – synonymous with academic and professional success.
Climate change
The other major factor, according to Adamou, is any period of crisis which "profoundly disrupts the use and transmission of languages". During conflicts, pandemics and natural disasters, "people are fighting for their survival, so the traditional organisation of their society suffers greatly", she explained.
Climate change is having a major impact in this regard. Untenable living conditions are pushing people to leave their home regions, often to move to urban areas where they are forced to integrate, losing their traditions and language in the process.
The issue of climate change is all the more important because its consequences are felt most acutely in the regions of the world where there is the greatest linguistic diversity.
Indonesia and Papua New Guinea are under threat from rising sea levels. The Amazon is increasingly affected by deforestation. Nigeria, with its 500 languages, is facing rising temperatures, pollution and coastal erosion. All of these factors are leading to the displacement of populations and threatening the survival of local languages.
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'A major impact on health'
This loss has far-reaching consequences. With every language that disappears, cultural identity and traditional knowledge are extinguished.
"A language, through its words, etymology and syntax, conveys a philosophy. Toponyms [place names derived from a topographical feature] carry the characteristics of the region. And cosmology – how the universe was conceived – is conveyed through myths in the ancestral language," said Adamou.
The extinction of a language takes this heritage with it, impoverishing the heritage of humanity. But it also has very real consequences for the speakers.
Being cut off from one's language means a reorientation of one's relationship with the world, losing one's bearings. This can lead to difficulties functioning in mainstream society, isolation, depression and alcoholism, often compounded by racism and social pressure.
"Studies show that not speaking one's own language has a major impact on health. People need this traditional framework to be healthy, both physically and mentally," Adamou explained.
Alsatian dialect taught in French state schools for the first time
Reclaiming identity
Several initiatives are attempting to preserve languages in danger of disappearing, as awareness of the issue and its consequences grows. Unesco has proclaimed 2022-2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, in order to promote preservation and rehabilitation programmes.
Institutions are making available archives of information on endangered languages – such as the CNRS's Pangloss website and the catalogue of the Endangered Language Project. This is material that is invaluable for local communities embarking on language revitalisation projects.
"There is currently a real movement to reclaim one's culture and identity, often driven by young indigenous people, who are stepping up their efforts and attempts to revitalise their language all over the world," said Adamou. These young people, she says, are railing against the pessimism engendered by statistics and the use of expressions such as "the last speakers".
"We can act before it's too late and, even when a language is no longer spoken, there is always hope," Amadou insists. She feels it is more accurate to talk about "dormant" languages rather than "dead" ones – after all, languages can be revived.
This phenomenon has been witnessed, for example with Wampanoag in the United States and Livonian in Latvia. But the most striking example is undoubtedly Hebrew. After disappearing for centuries, it is now the official language of a state and the mother tongue of several million people. We haven't necessarily heard the last of those languages in danger now.
This article was adapted from the original version in French.
