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The University of Chicago Magazine: December 2000, Features. How important is language death? There is a news story being distributed by the AP that laments the loss of languages.

How important is language death?

It claims While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks, according to linguistic experts struggling to save at least some of them. The langugage of this sentence is interesting. Languages are said to "die out" and "linguistic experts" are "struggling to save at least some of them. " BBC - Today - The death of language? An estimated 7,000 languages are being spoken around the world.

BBC - Today - The death of language?

But that number is expected to shrink rapidly in the coming decades. What is lost when a language dies? 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.