Language Extinction 语言的消亡 - 大白早自习：每天5分钟，学知识，练英文

Language Extinction A language dies when the last person who speaks it dies. But you know, sometimes people say it dies when the second-last person who speaks it dies, because the last person has nobody to talk to. Well, of course, languages have come and gone throughout history as communities have come and gone. But what's happening now is something really quite extraordinary. Well, there are about 6000 languages in the world at the moment, more or less. Nobody knows the exact number. And of these, people think that about half of them are so seriously endangered, but they are likely to die out in the course of present century. Now the pr...