When any of the elderly members of the Yuchi (yoo-chee) tribe of Oklahoma tells a joke in his native language, chances are that only four other people will get it. That's right: Only five people in the world speak this American Indian tongue.
Experts say that every two weeks, a language disappears. At this rate, nearly half of the planet's 7,000 languages will be gone in 100 years. To draw attention to at-risk languages, the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and the National Geographic Society have joined forces on a project called Enduring Voices. In September, the team announced the areas with the greatest number of endangered languages. The five hot spots are northern Australia, central South America, eastern Siberia, the southwestern United States and North America's upper Pacific coastal zone.
"North America is in dire straits," Greg Anderson, director of Living Tongues, told TFK. He says 54 native languages in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia, Canada, are in the most serious danger. Siletz Dee-Ni (sih-lets dee-nee), a language spoken on the Siletz reservation, in Oregon, is believed to have just one fluent speaker.
One of the biggest threats to these languages is that they are being replaced by dominant languages like English. But when an ancient, native language is lost, some of the speakers' history is lost too.
Researchers hope to document and revitalize these languages. "We are eager to fire up a new generation of people to get involved," says Anderson. "But there are simply not enough trained people to do the work that is necessary."