A forecast of language extinctionAn estimated 7,000 distinct languages are spoken as a mother tongue across the world. Mother tongues of about half the people in the world belong to a pool of 10 most spoken languages; language diversity faces a grave threat. English now has 340 million native speakers and more than 1.2 billion second language speakers, with much scope for further growth. Regionally, indigenous linguistic diversity declined over 60% in the Americas, 30% in the Pacific including Australia and almost 20% in Africa. The index actually tries to understand the distribution of speakers among all the spoken languages of the world.

Source: The Hindu September 07, 2023 21:47 UTC