Lists of

endangered languages An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead langu ...

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 An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native people, it becomes an extinct language. UNESCO defines four levels of language endanger ...

Asia

List of endangered languages in Asia An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes a dead language. A language may be endangered in one area but show si ...

List of endangered languages in Bangladesh Bangladesh hosts a number of endangered languages that are defined as languages at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. UNESCO define ...

* List of endangered languages in China *

List of endangered languages in India An endangered language is a language that is at a risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. UNESCO defines four levels of language endange ...

* List of endangered languages in Indonesia * List of endangered languages in Nepal

Europe

List of endangered languages in Europe An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. A language may be endangered in one area but show ...

List of endangered languages in Russia An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. A language may be endangered in one area but show ...

North America

List of endangered languages in North America An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. UNESCO defines four levels of language endan ...

List of endangered languages in Canada An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. UNESCO defines four levels of language endangerme ...

List of endangered languages in Mexico An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. UNESCO defines four levels of language end ...

List of endangered languages in the United States An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. UNESCO defines four levels of language endan ...

Central and South America

* List of endangered languages in Central America *

List of endangered languages in South America An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. UNESCO defines four levels of language endang ...

List of endangered languages in Brazil An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. UNESCO defines four levels of language endange ...

List of endangered languages in Colombia An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native speakers, it becomes an extinct language. UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Sci ...

Oceania

List of Australian Aboriginal languages There are numerous Australian Aboriginal languages and dialects, many of which are endangered. An endangered language is one that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its nativ ...

* List of endangered languages in Papua New Guinea *

List of endangered languages of the Pacific This is a list of endangered languages of the Pacific, based on the definitions used by UNESCO. An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use because there is little transmission of the language to younger gener ...

Discussion

SIL Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

(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 Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

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 Ladin may refer to: * Ladin language, a language in northern Italy, often classified as a Rhaeto-Romance language *Ladin people, the inhabitants of the Dolomite Alps region of northern Italy See also *Laden (disambiguation) * Ladino (disambigua ...

speakers left, almost all children still learn it as their mother tongue; thus Ladin is not currently endangered. Similarly, the

Hawaiian language Hawaiian (', ) is a Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language o ...

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.

References

External links

*
EndangeredLanguages.com
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Endangered languages