Only Ten Percent Of World's Languages Expected to Exist in 2115

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• published: 25 Jan 2015
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A Columbia University linguist predicts that in a hundred years, only 10 percent of the world’s current 6,000 languages will be spoken; English will be the common core alongside a variety of native tongues. Dr. John McWhorter, linguistics professor at Columbia University, estimates that only 10 percent of the world’s current 6,000 languages will be spoken in 100 years. Of those 600 surviving languages, many will be “optimized” or streamlined for ease of use over time. McWhorter predicts that English will never be the world’s only language, as some fear, but that it will be used alongside native tongues. That said, English will probably continue to be the world’s go-to instead of Mandarin Chinese because despite the Asian country’s massive population, it is already entrenched as the world’s default language. Chinese is also much harder to learn as a secondary language. For endangered languages, the key to keeping them alive is to instill them in children whose brains can adapt quickly to even the slightest quirk. When less agile adults are forced to adopt a language due to migration or displacement, they simplify things to get by then add new expressions over time. While it is unfortunate that most languages will disappear, more people will be able to communicate via one universal language, and their secondary, local tongues will be easier to learn.