A language goes extinct every few weeks somewhere in the world

Of the world's roughly 7,000 living languages, a large share are spoken by only a few dozen or a few hundred remaining people, mostly elderly. Linguists estimate that at the current rate of loss, as many as half of all languages spoken today could disappear by the end of this century as their last fluent speakers die without passing them on.

— David Crystal, Language Death — Cambridge University Press, 2000
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