Just found out that over 200 languages have no native speakers left

Saw a post on a linguistics forum about oral traditions dying out, and it said 230 languages went silent in the last century alone, which honestly made me wonder how much history we are losing without even noticing.

3 comments

3 Comments

wilson.olivia5d ago

Oh dear, my attempts at learning French probably didn't help either.

hannah_wells5d ago

My grandpa's native Xhosa dialect had only 3 elderly speakers left before he passed.

ramirez.vera5d ago

One elder passing away when there's only three left is like losing a third of everything. My grandma was one of the last speakers of a small Italian dialect from her village, and when she went, that whole way of talking just stopped existing in our family. It's such a quiet, permanent kind of loss that most people don't even notice. I'm really sorry your grandpa's dialect didn't get passed down, that's a heavy thing to carry. Those three remaining speakers must feel like the last librarians of a whole world.