An article at Anthropology.net summarizes an alarming trend of the extinction of languages, particularly in Northern Australia, Central South America, North America’s upper Pacific coastal zone, Eastern Siberia, and Oklahoma and the southwestern US.

“Every 14 days a language dies. By 2100, more than half of the more than 7,000 languages spoken on Earth—many of them never yet recorded—will likely disappear, taking with them a wealth of knowledge about history, culture, the natural environment, and how the human brain works.”