A language dies every 14 days, and half those spoken today are expected to vanish by 2100. The secret language of the Kallawaya, in central South America, is more than 400 years old and spoken by fewer than a hundred people.
The Kallawaya use Spanish or Aymara in daily life but when discussing medicinal plants, used in their role as healers, they speak their own language.
Aboriginal Australia holds some of the most endangered languages such as Amurdag, which was believed extinct until a few years ago when linguists came across Charlie Mangulda, left, in the Northern Territory.
Mednyj Aleut is spoken by a few people in Siberia. Unlike most languages it has two parents, a combination of largely Aleut vocabulary and Russian verb endings. Nivkh, another Siberian language, has 26 ways of saying a number - depending on the object.
Siletz Dee-ni is spoken on the Siletz reservation in Oregon, US. Residents adopted a pidgin version of Chinook, almost wiping out their indigenous languages.
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