Question: as languages die out will there be a few core languages that are left or will we develop new ones with variations to the most popular languages today?

anon answered on 15 Jun 2015:

Fantastic question! Unfortunately, around 400 languages have died out over the past century. This is shocking and very sad. I don’t think that the really big languages of the world will die out anytime soon, but it is sad to lose languages. That is why many governments in countries in which people speak ‘minority languages’ introduce initiatives to preserve those languages. Linguists play an important role here, because they can raise awareness and help by writing about the languages that are at risk. (And of course we all can help by learning lots of languages… 🙂 )