Your Guide to Endangered Languages and How To Support Them

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Despite our many advances in language technology and communication, entire languages disappear every day. These drastic changes can happen in the span of just a few generations—and all it takes is a population learning one language instead of another.

Can we predict which languages are next to fade into history, and can we do anything to stop it? Learn about endangered languages all around the world, how a language becomes endangered in the first place, and how linguists and community leaders work tirelessly to keep these languages from becoming extinct. Then, consider helping to keep an endangered language alive or just learn a new-to-you language with Rosetta Stone!

What is an endangered language?

An endangered language is spoken by much fewer people than those who spoke it in previous generations. These languages aren’t widely taught in schools, but are sometimes taught in family homes. With an extremely endangered language, only a few elders in a population speak it, and parents no longer teach it to children as their first language.

Languages can become endangered for many reasons. Societal changes and political shifts impact languages taught in schools or published in books, making it difficult for children to learn them. Indigenous languages are especially at risk as they are less likely to be represented in schools and government documents. 

Additionally, many endangered languages are language isolates, meaning that they don’t share a language family with other languages. Bilingual speakers are less likely to learn a language that isn’t closely related to their own, making language isolates more likely to become forgotten.

Categories of endangered languages

Not every endangered language is at risk of disappearing very quickly. The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) categorizes endangered languages in the following groups:

• Vulnerable: Children speak the language at home, but not in public.
• Definitely endangered: Children don’t learn the language as their first language.
• Severely endangered: Grandparents speak the language, and adult children understand it, but they don’t teach it to their own children.
• Critically endangered: Only grandparents speak and understand the language, and they may speak other languages more often.
• Extinct: No one speaks the language anymore.

A common example of an extinct or dead language is Latin. Latin was widely spoken during the expansion of the Roman Empire, but it is not a native language to any population today. However, many consider Latin to be a dormant language, which is a language slowly coming back to life. While Latin still isn’t a native language, it’s commonly used in academics, medicine, and law, requiring scholars and students to learn Latin in schools.

How many endangered languages are there?

Of the 7,164 languages in the world today, more than 3,100 languages are endangered. That means nearly 50% of the world’s languages are at risk of disappearing in the next few generations.

The statistics get even more surprising when you see the most spoken languages in the world. More than 4 billion people (around half the world’s population) speak English, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, and/or French. The other 7,259 languages are spoken by the other half of the world, including the most endangered languages.

Lists of endangered languages around the world

According to UNESCO’s study of at-risk languages, each continent contains hundreds or thousands of endangered languages. Most are Indigenous languages spoken by small populations of the earliest people who settled in the regions, while others are languages lost in the strife between various countries.

Take a look at examples of endangered languages from each continent. While by no means a comprehensive collection, these lists should give you an idea of the range of vitality, number of speakers, and regions for each endangered language.

Endangered languages in North and Central America

Many endangered languages in North and Central America were passed down from older generations of Native Americans. Spread throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the countries of Central America, these languages range from vulnerable to critically endangered.

*all chart data from ethnologue.com, endangeredlanguages.com, and unesco.org.uk/

Endangered languages in Africa

Africa is home to around 1,500 and 3,000 languages, many of which are severely or critically endangered. Some vulnerable languages, like Suba in Kenya, have over 100,000 speakers, while critically endangered languages like Korana in South Africa have fewer than 10 speakers. Languages with so few speakers are at the highest risk of disappearing in the next generation.

Endangered languages in Asia and the Middle East

Asia and the Middle East are the locations of some of the oldest civilizations in the world. The changes in language usage throughout these regions reflect many societal and political changes in the last 5,000 years, as well as long before recorded history. 

For example, though Yiddish doesn’t seem like an endangered language with 3 million speakers, over 6 million Yiddish speakers were killed in World War II, drastically changing the landscape and future of this Jewish language.

Endangered languages in Europe

Many European languages are alive and well throughout the world today, largely due to European exploration and colonization in the 16th to 18th centuries. English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Portuguese, and other languages are commonly spoken in nearly every continent on Earth. 

From the vulnerable language of Belarusian with 4 million speakers to the critically endangered Karaim with 20 total speakers, you’ll find many languages with different needs to make it to the next generation.

Endangered languages in Oceania

With over 800 languages spoken today, Papua New Guinea is the most multilingual country on Earth. The vast majority of these Indigenous languages have fewer than 100,000 speakers, and many endangered languages are spoken in small communities of 100 people or fewer.

You’ll also find endangered languages in other countries in Oceania. Hundreds of Australian Aboriginal languages have under 100 speakers, while widely spoken New Zealand languages, like Māori, are still vulnerable with 70,000 speakers.

Endangered languages in South America

The majority of South American countries list Spanish or Portuguese as an official language. However, every country on this continent has speakers who still know and pass down endangered Indigenous languages, including Chácobo, Guambiano, and Mehináku. Discover which South American languages are at the highest risk of extinction, and which are more likely to survive a few generations from now.

How can endangered languages be preserved?

Losing languages in our world lets history slip through our fingers. With language loss comes the loss of regional customs, historical context, and cultural identity, much of which can never be replaced after the language is gone. But thanks to large language preservation efforts, like the Rosetta Stone Endangered Languages Program and the Endangered Language Project, many critically endangered languages are still around today. 

If you’re interested in preserving endangered languages from becoming extinct, consider contributing to efforts to bring native languages to local schools or volunteering in language preservation projects at nearby universities. You can also be part of the language maintenance movement by learning a language connected to your family history or ethnicity—or just one you’re interested in!