A language dies when there is nobody left to speak it. By the
best estimates, around 6,000 languages are alive in the world
today. Half of them, perhaps more, will die in the next century
— that's 1,200 months from now. So this means that somewhere in
the world, a language dies about every two weeks. Why do
languages die? There are many reasons — natural disasters (for
instance, if an entire village of speakers is killed in a flood,
or wiped out in a disease epidemic), social assimilation
(speakers cease using their native language and adopt a more
popular language in response to economic, cultural, or political
pressures). Genocide, colonization, and forced language
extinction are causes. The belief that language diversity is
healthy and necessary is often compared to biodiversity, and the
idea that a wide array of living species is essential to the
planet's well-being. Michael E. Krauss, of the University of
Alaska's Alaska Native Language Center, extends this analogy to
define three stages of language heal