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| Many of theworld’s languages face serious risk of extinction. Efforts to prevent
this cultural loss are severely constrained by a poor understanding of the geographical
patterns and drivers of extinction risk. We quantify the global
distribution of language extinction risk—represented by small range and
speaker population sizes and rapid declines in the number of speakers—and
identify the underlying environmental and socioeconomic drivers. We show
that both small range and speaker population sizes are associated with rapid
declines in speaker numbers, causing 25%of existing languages to be threatened
based on criteria used for species. Language range and population sizes are
small in tropical and arctic regions, particularly in areas with high rainfall,
high topographic heterogeneity and/or rapidly growing human populations.
By contrast, recent speaker declines have mainly occurred at high latitudes
and are strongly linked to high economic growth. Threatened languages are
numerous in the tropics, the Himalayas and northwestern North America.
These results indicate that small-population languages remaining in economically
developed regions are seriously threatened by continued speaker
declines. However, risks of future language losses are especially high in the tropics
and in the Himalayas, as these regions harbour many small-population
languages and are undergoing rapid economic growth. | |
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