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Lists of endangered languages 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. [ 1 ]
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. [1] Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a " dead language ".
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),from facts published in their "Atlas of Languages in Danger of Disappearing", there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken worldwide today, and half of the world's population speaks the eight most common. [4]
UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger categories: This is a list of lists of extinct languages. By group. By continent. List of extinct languages of Africa ...
A revived language is a language that at one point had no native speakers, but through revitalization efforts has regained native speakers. The most frequent reason for extinction is the marginalisation of local languages within a wider dominant nation state , which might at times amount to outright political oppression.
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 signs of revitalisation in another, as with the Irish language. [citation needed]
It is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. Until the 20th century, the Ainu languages – Hokkaido Ainu and the now-extinct Kuril Ainu and Sakhalin Ainu – were spoken throughout Hokkaido, the southern half of the island of Sakhalin and by small numbers of people in the Kuril Islands.
Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent. At about 30.2 million km 2 (11.7 million sq mi) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth 's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. [ 2 ]