990: Dying Languages and New Accents Aug 25, 2017

Many people lament that languages are dying out at a rate that has been estimated to be as many as one every two weeks, but is more likely to be around once every two to three months. Regardless of the exact numbers, it is true that most people speak only a small percentage of the world's languages, and dialects and accents are becoming less distinct largely because of an increasingly global economy, as well as technologies that allow people to connect with others far away, and necessitate a lingua franca. Not all hope should be lost, however, for while many languages are losing speakers, and dialects are disappearing, new ones are emerging. It is easy to discern when a language has become extinct because no people, or only one person can speak it, but it is much harder to determine when a new one is formed. Much about various standards are political, such as how to classify the difference between Norwegian and Swedish, but also natural changes to dialects that will eventually become new languages over time can be hard to spot. For example, some of the vowels have changed subtly in American English spoken in the South West due to influences from Spanish, but while this is only a change in accents, it is changes like those that eventually become new dialects and new languages, as happens with phonemes often. Also, it should be noted that the majority of languages are poorly documented at best, so exact numbers of languages, and even general knowledge of whether something is a language or a dialect can be hard to assess accurately.