Dying Languages
40% of the 7,000 languages are reported by linguists to be endangered, with many more extinct. Minority languages are in extreme danger, with most populations speaking the majority language of their country or the world.
Example: Galician only spoken by approximately 2.4 million people, spoken popularly in Spain.
When multilingual families are teaching their children language, it is either the majority dialect/language or just English, since English dominates the world (depending on where they are growing up). It is imperative that parents start teaching their children their mother tongue so they do not lose their roots. Even if the smaller language seems like an “inconvience” since not many people would speak it, if they learn the smaller languages, that gives them room to grow and learn the majority language and even other related languages.Â
Example 1
Galician only spoken by approximately 2.4 million people, most popularly spoken in Spain.
Example 2
Catalan is a minority language, spoken by 9 million people and is the official language of Andorra, a small, landlocked country in Southwestern Europe.