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7,117.

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Okay, it would be a short video if I just
gave that one answer.

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But that’s the number according to
the 2020 edition of Ethnologue,

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widely considered to be the closest thing
we have to a directory of languages.

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But here’s the catch: languages are not
separate, distinct things.

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They evolve, split, merge, fall out of use.

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And it's often difficult to say exactly where
one language ends, and another begins.

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Sure, it's clear that my English and
another person's Mandarin

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are completely different languages,

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but what about my English
and someone else's Scots?

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Or someone else's Singlish?

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Or someone else’s rural
Southern American English,

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which might not be understood
by the Dowager of Downton Abbey? 

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And it’s not just about location, either.

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There’s a difference between
the English I use here,

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versus what I actually use
when I'm talking to friends.

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And what about over time?

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Where does English start to become
Middle English or Old English?

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At some point, it’s different enough to
get a new label:

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but there isn't a
naturally-occuring clean line.

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There’s an old saying that a language is
just a dialect with an army and a navy.

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Languages change to adapt to the needs
of their speakers.

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And there are a few reasons for that.

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Maybe it’s to provide new words for new
concepts.

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“Computer” used to be the term for someone
who was paid to sit and do calculations.

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Their job was to compute, they were a computer.

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When automated tools came along,
they took on the name.

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Sometimes languages change to
speed up communication.

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“Going to” wasn’t always a marker for
future tense:

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and saying “I’m going to start” makes
no sense when taken literally.

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You can’t go to “start”,
start is not a place,

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but the phrase “going to” became lexicalized.

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And then it turned into a word: “gonna”,

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and then “I’m gonna” became “Imma”.

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That’s a word in common use that’s probably
under fifty years old. Still English.

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Sometimes a language changes because people
are trying to find an identity.

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The words we use help us
fit in or to stand out.

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Language changes spread across populations,

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they act as markers of who you are
and who your group is.

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If enough people change their pronunciation, intonation,
their word and grammar choices, all together,

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you end up with a dialect.

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If that happens over and over and over
for centuries, well,

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you might end up with a new language.

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Or you might end up with an old one
falling out of use.

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Centuries of colonialism and globalization
have encouraged the death of local languages.

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And even fairly major ones can be in trouble.

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Icelandic is spoken by more than 300,000 people,

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it’s the national language of
a European country.

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But it’s not supported by
iPhones or Android phones

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If you speak Icelandic and you
want to use a smartphone,

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so if you want to participate in modern life,

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you need to speak another language,
probably English.

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Very little media is translated into Icelandic,

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almost no-one who moves to Iceland
speaks it,

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which means that Icelandic youth sometimes

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just use English between each other
as a first language.

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Unless deliberate efforts are made
to keep it alive,

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even a national language like Icelandic
could be at risk eventually.

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So, yes, Ethnologue counts 7,000 languages,

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based on fairly reasonable lines
that they’ve decided on.

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Someone has to draw some lines somewhere,
so they do.

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But of those 7,000, 50% to 90% of them may be
functionally extinct by the end of the century.

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And while I’m sure there would be advantages
to one global language,

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it’s not just about communication:

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it’s about access to culture,
to history, to subtext,

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to the insights that can come from one language
explaining in a single word

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what would take another language fifty.

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If you’re watching this and thinking
“ah, it doesn’t matter too much”,

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imagine how you’d feel if it was English
that was endangered,

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and ask yourself if you’d be okay with the
next generations

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only having translations of the works
you grew up with.

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If you want more linguistics,
then my co-author Gretchen McCulloch

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has a podcast called Lingthusiasm.

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The link is in the description,
I recommend it.