Even linguists are not sure of the exact number of languages existing in the world
So let us leave linguists to their linguistics, especially since the number is changing rapidly anyway – on average, one language disappears from the planet every two weeks. And according to scientists' forecasts, by the middle of the 21st century, about half of the currently living languages will fall out of use.
Such is the price of globalization and migration: a huge number of people leave their native villages for cities, from one country to another, lose their native language, and it gradually dies. Or it disappears along with the death of its last speaker.
As "Russkaya Germaniya" notes, just over 400 languages are currently on the verge of extinction. Of these, 357 languages can count only about fifty speakers each, and 46 languages have only one speaker left. We do not know if this includes the Bikya language, which was spoken only by an 87-year-old woman living in a village on the border of Cameroon and Nigeria, who managed to tell English linguist David Dalby about it in detail.
The rarest languages in Europe are Livonian, close to Finnish, the native language of about 200 Latvian citizens, of which only about 40 are speakers, as well as the Votic language of the small Votic people living in the Kingisepp District of Leningrad Oblast. Currently, no more than 10 people speak it, and all of them are well over 70 years old. Another dying European language is Wymysorys, the language of a German ethnographic group in the Polish town of Wilamowice. Its speakers number about 70 people.
In the Asian part of Russia, for example, the Kerek language is dying out, spoken by the Kereks living in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug – at most 10 people speak this unwritten language. Speakers of the Aleut-Mednovsky language – the language of the Aleuts of Medny Island, one of the Commander Islands – number only 5 in total, and that according to 2004 data. Compared to them, the Udege are simply lucky – the Udege language is spoken today by 103 people in several rural districts of Primorsky and Khabarovsk Krais. And the Ket language, spoken by the Kets living in the Yenisei River basin, is considered native by as many as 213 people! However, only 30 people can actively speak it, and they are of advanced age.
In African Chad, only 30 speakers of the Gooundo language remain. In the same Africa, 8 people communicate in the Elpomo language. Ongota, or Biraile, is a language spoken by only 6 elderly people in an Ethiopian village on the Weito River. Although it is quite possible that ruthless time has already crossed some off these lists.
According to 2012 data, only 10 people speak the Alua (Saaroa) language in Taiwan. In Eastern Bolivia, only 20 people living high in the Andes mountains know their native Leco language. And only 10 Japanese citizens remain faithful to the language of their ancestors – Ainu, which is mainly spoken on the island of Hokkaido.
In 2007, there were only 3 people left who had sufficient command of the Yuchi language – a tribe in the southeastern United States that lost not only its native lands but also its language after forced relocation to Oklahoma and cultural assimilation.
Perhaps only 40 residents of the Mexican village of Ayapa in the state of Tabasco have not yet forgotten their Ayapaneco – a nearly extinct language from the Mixe-Zoque family of indigenous languages.
And in the state of South Australia, only two sisters – Gladys and Doreen Miller – can still communicate in Wirangu, an Australian language that was spoken in the territory of the eponymous tribe.
It is unknown for how many centuries the people of the Puchikvar tribe, who inhabited the Andaman Islands in India, spoke their language. But in 2006, scientists counted its speakers and found that only 10 remained. Although it is possible that today there are fewer or none at all.
Such is the sad and far from complete list of humanity's linguistic losses. One consolation: some of these dying languages have a small chance of survival – when scientists take up their study and revival. Which is happening with the same Wirangu, Votic, Ket, and a number of other languages.