Disappearing Languages

The way we speak has an enormous effect on our identities. The ever-changing languages, dialects, or even accents that we use define our relationship with the world, allowing us to express concepts and ideas that might be impossible in other languages.

Iktsuarpok, for example, is an Inuit word for the feeling of anticipation when you’re expecting someone that leads you to constantly check to see if they’ve arrived, while hiraeth is a Welsh word that reflects a type of longing for the homeland or the romanticized past. The Japanese word komorebi refers to the sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees, while the Yaghan word mamihlapinatapai describes the wordless, meaningful look shared by two people who both want to initiate something, but are reluctant to do so.

Diversity of language brings an immeasurable cultural richness to the world, but the number of regular speakers of less-common languages is in steep decline. You might think this is a modern phenomenon, but linguists estimate that linguistic diversity was at its peak in 8,000 BCE, when as many as 20,000 languages may have been in existence (assuming a world population of 5-10 million and an average community size of 500-1,000). Today, it's likely that less than half of that number remain.

In the charts and maps below, we’ve investigated the languages that UNESCO describes as threatened in its Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. Each language is represented by a circle—with its size scaled to the number of people that speak it, and its color indicating by how endangered it is. Further down, we’ve profiled several languages in danger, and you can also calculate your nearest endangered language. Finally, there’s a map where you can explore the global distribution of these languages.

How many people speak these languages?

First, let’s look at how the size of each dot corresponds with the number of people who speak each language. Here’s a comparison of different dot sizes, and how many speakers they indicate:

There are plenty of endangered languages with fewer than 10,000 speakers that are hard to see on these bubble charts. Near the bottom of the page, you’ll find a map showing all of them.

How endangered are these languages?

UNESCO puts endangered languages into four different categories, depending on how they’re used. We’ve sorted the bubbles from above into those categories, each represented by a color. It’s worth noting that there is only a weak relationship between the number of speakers and how endangered a language is. Some languages have only a few speakers, but are less endangered than others that may be spoken by many people.

Where are these languages spoken?

We can also break down the bubble chart above into parts of the world. The charts below show how endangered languages are distributed around the world, but be careful when reading it because the size of each clump reflects the number of speakers—not the number of languages.

For example, while Asia has the biggest clump, and also the most endangered languages, the continent with the fewest endangered languages is actually Europe. Oceania has about the same number of endangered languages as Africa, but they’re spoken by fewer people so its clump is the smallest—not surprising considering most of those languages are distributed across scattered chains of tiny islands.

Languages in profile

In this section, we’ve picked out three languages that have particularly interesting stories behind them. You can also identify your nearest endangered language.

To read about the role that languages play in identity, be sure to check out the article that accompanies this visual essay. Plus, if you want to talk about digital identity in more detail, be sure to join our ID Question Facebook group.