An estimated 7,000 languages are being spoken around the world. But that number is expected to shrink rapidly in the coming decades. In 1992 a prominent US linguist stunned the academic world by predicting that by the year 2100, 90% of the world's languages would have ceased to exist.
According to Ethnologue, a US organisation that compiles a global database of languages, 473 languages are currently classified as endangered. Among the ranks are the two known speakers of Lipan Apache alive in the US, four speakers of Totoro in Columbia and the single Bikya speaker in Cameroon.
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