Arts & Humanities

Lost Languages

The Race to Preserve the World's Dying Tongues

Ingrid Larsson

Documentary linguist at the University of Stockholm, specializing in endangered languages of the Arctic and Sub-Saharan Africa.

February 22, 2026·12 min read

Lost Languages

Of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken today, more than half are expected to disappear by the end of this century. With each language that dies, humanity loses a unique way of understanding the world — and a repository of knowledge accumulated over thousands of years.

TOPICS

linguisticsendangered languagesculturediversity

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