00:00Ever thought about words disappearing forever?
00:02Welcome to Fact Channels, where we unravel 14 jaw-dropping insights on language extinction,
00:08because when tongues go silent, stories risk fading into oblivion.
00:12Did you know that?
00:14Every 14 days another language fades into silence, forever lost to time.
00:20When a language dies, so does the unique worldview it encapsulated,
00:24like the distinct way Hawaiian expresses directions based on nature.
00:27Half of the world's languages today have no written form,
00:31making their extinction silent and often unnoticed.
00:35Would you believe?
00:36The last fluent speaker of a language is often called a language isolate,
00:41living with a knowledge no other person shares.
00:44In the 21st century, urban migration and technology are paradoxically accelerating language extinction,
00:50as global tongues dominate communication.
00:52The Living Tongues Institute estimates that around 3,000 of the 7,000 languages spoken today are endangered.
01:02Some languages survive in unexpected places.
01:05Garifuna, once on the brink of extinction, is now thriving in New York due to immigrant communities.
01:11Languages like Manx and Cornish have been resurrected from dormancy,
01:15proving that language death can sometimes be reversed.
01:18How about the fact that, in Papua New Guinea alone, over 800 languages are spoken,
01:25but many are now critically endangered.
01:27When the last speaker of a language dies, it takes a tremendous anthropological effort even to reconstruct its grammar and usage.
01:36Many ancient languages exist solely on digital platforms today.
01:40Their only written records are online or on hard drives.
01:43In Canada, indigenous languages face such steep decline that they could vanish within two generations without serious revitalization efforts.
01:52While Swahili has spread far beyond its roots,
01:55thousands of African languages today face extinction without documentation or preservation.
02:00The Endangered Languages Project seeks to map and archive threatened languages worldwide to catch whispers before they're silenced.
02:08Unlock more amazing facts, like, subscribe, and stay curious with fact channels.
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