On the Death of Languages

from James Temperton at wired.co.uk:
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Languages everywhere are dying; it is estimated that one language is driven to extinction every 14 days--  and that's despite an increase in the number of languages supported by the internet. But is the lack of language diversity online accelerating language death or simply reflecting what's happening in the offline world?

There currently around 7,100 languages in use, but 90 percent of these are used by less than 100,000 people. Some are only spoken by the inhabitants of remote villages, while others-- such as the Peruvian language Taushiro-- are thought to only be spoken by one person.

History suggests that language loss, much like language change, is inevitable. But understanding the cause of this loss is complicated.
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The entire post can be read here.