The last word: why half of the world's languages could vanish this century

Books written in the Quechua indigenous language – spoken by about 10 million people – at a primary school in Licapa, Peru, September 2021. AP - Martin Mejia

There are around 7,000 languages spoken in the world, but that number is shrinking. Unesco estimates that half could disappear by the end of the century. So how are languages lost, and what does that mean for the people who speak them?

Despite the thousands of languages, just 20 or so dominate the global linguistic landscape. Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Japanese, Javanese, German, Wu, Korean, French, Telugu, Marathi, Turkish, Tamil, Vietnamese and Urdu are the mother tongues of more than 3 billion people.