LINGUISTS are the kind of people who are fascinated by the human faculty of language. They can take sounds and combine them into a sound stream that expresses emotions, feelings and concepts.

Language is an incredible faculty that humans have which makes them different from every other species. Language shapes the identities and around the world and the creativity of the human mind has resulted in an incredible linguistic diversity.

Today, there are more than 7,000 languages spoken across the globe. Half of the population on this planet speaks 50 languages and the other half of the population speaks the other 6,950 languages.

Language changes all the time – new lexical items, new phrases and new expressions are borrowed from other languages.

The language shift is another phenomenon which reflects the medium of language. It is the switching of one language into another language – and this is happening at an incredible speed.

Linguists have estimated that by the end of this century, half of the 7,000 languages would have fallen silent. Such kind of massive extinction can be compared with the eradication of the dinosaurs. Why is this happening?

We all know that our biological diversity is under a horrible threat. Globalisation, climate change and urbanisation make people give up languages for social and economic mobility.

Linguists have been travelling the globe, searching for words and ideas that are at the risk of being lost forever. Recently, they interviewed a man in Northern Australia who may be the last speaker of that language previously thought to be extinct.

Half of the languages are likely to die out in the coming decades. Linguists have proved that every two weeks around the planet one language completely disappears forever and ever.

Amarah Sumbul

Islamabad

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2019