Nearly 1,400 languages used by less than 1,000 persons
Gwon Jae-il, Linguistics at Seoul National University The pool of world languages, a valuable legacy of human culture, is rapidly drying up. According to linguists, nearly 23 percent of some 6,000 languages are used by less than 1,000 persons. Such endangered languages are not limited to any particular region. There are currently about 165 native languages in North America. Among them, 74 languages are spoken only by a few elderly persons and 58 of these languages have less than 1,000 users. About 27 percent of the 400-some languages in Central and South America are on the verge of extinction. Among them, one language is used by a single family and another language in Mexico is spoken by about 10 elderly persons. In all of the Americas, only Paraguay uses a native language as its national language. In Oceania, a language disappears once a year. The Scottish, Gaelic, and Bretagne languages of Europe, which bore great influence about 1,000 years ago, are threatened with extinction. Schools in Ireland have made recent strides to teach Gaelic to students, but the younger generation does not want to learn the language, as it is not used at home in Ireland anymore.Asian languages likely to disappear soon include the language used by the Ainu tribe in Japan and the Manchu language, which once held sway over a large swath of Northeast Asia. Manchu, and several other endangered languages of the Altaic family, bear a connection to the Korean language.
