Study: 25 Percent of World's Languages Could Disappear Soon

Economic development seems to be threatening hundreds of languages around the world as people transition to more dominant languages and give up their own.

As much as 25 percent of the world's 7,000 languages are at risk of extinction, according to a new study recently published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"We found that at the global scale, language speaker declines are strongly linked to economic growth--that is, declines are particularly occurring in economically developed regions," said lead study author Tatsuya Amano of the University of Cambridge in England, as quoted by Live Science.

Languages are said to be endangered when they are being spoken in just a few places and if the number of people who speak them is quickly decreasing.

"We showed that this is a global phenomenon, which I think is the most important in our findings," Amano said. "So economically developed countries with many languages, such as the United States and Australia, need immediate attention if their languages are to be conserved."

If people don't work to preserve languages that are at risk, half of the languages spoken today will be gone by the end of the century, the United Nations has predicted.

For the study, the researchers identified which languages face extinction and then analyzed environmental, social and economic factors that might be at play, finding that economic growth was "strongly linked" to declines in language speakers.

Amano hopes that future research can reveal the effects of how languages are used and taught in schools around the world as well as potential threats to language diversity.

"There exists detailed information on projected future changes in the environment, economies and climates," said Amano, as quoted by Live Science. "Using such information, together with the findings of this study and further analysis, we would like to understand what will happen to the world's languages, where it will happen and which languages will be threatened in particular."