ABSTRACT
Global linguistic diversity is decreasing sharply and rapidly. Various estimates predict that 25% to 90% of the world’s 7,000 some languages (most unwritten and undocumented) may soon vanish. This chapter outlines the current state of linguistic diversity from a global perspective and considers some of the challenges in assessing endangerment and risk. Differing data, terminology and categories used by different researchers and resources make it very difficult to assess language vitality and endangerment on a global and regional scale as well as to gauge trends longitudinally, but there are strong links between language vitality, size, domains of use and status.
