Every two weeks on average, one of the 6,500 languages of the world vanishes with the death of its last elderly speakers, taking with it a wealth of cultural knowledge, experts say.

The Reuters website reports that, at a recent meeting in Kuala Lumpur, linguistic experts said the United States, Canada and Australia were the worse off, with a wealth of Asian languages also under threat.

‘There is a vast treasure house of human knowledge,’ said Nicholas Ostler, President of Foundation for Endangered Languages, a UK-based group.

‘So when a language is lost, it’s just not the words but typically it’s a kind of knowledge that came with that language.’

According to a report in U.S. magazine Cultural Survival, 89 percent of the 154 tribal languages left in the United States were in imminent danger of extinction, with more than half having only a handful of elderly speakers.

In the state of Oklahoma for example, at least 14 languages - including Hitchiti, Kaw, Kitsai and Peoria of the native Americans - are no longer spoken.

Read more on the Reuters website.

Categories: Community languages, News about languages