Why is the number of languages "increasing"?

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To try everything Brilliant has to offer for free for a full 30 days, visit https://brilliant.org/minuteearth . You’ll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription. Lots of languages and species are going extinct, but because others keep getting found or described, the official counts of languages and species are still increasing. LEARN MORE ************** To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords: - Language death: when a language loses its last known native speaker. - Species extinction: the termination of a species by the death of its last member. - Ethnologue.com: the world’s foremost authority on the languages of the world and their current status. SUPPORT MINUTEEARTH ************************** If you like what we do, you can help us!: - Become our patron: https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth - Our merch: http://dftba.com/minuteearth - Our book: https://minuteearth.com/books - Share this video with your friends and family - Leave us a comment (we read them!) CREDITS ********* David Goldenberg | Script Writer, Narrator and Director Lizah van der Aart | Storyboard Artist Sarah Berman | Illustration, Video Editing and Animation Nathaniel Schroeder | Music MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC https://neptunestudios.info OUR STAFF ************ Lizah van der Aart • Sarah Berman • Cameron Duke Arcadi Garcia i Rius • David Goldenberg • Melissa Hayes Alex Reich • Henry Reich • Peter Reich Ever Salazar • Leonardo Souza • Kate Yoshida OUR LINKS ************ Youtube | https://youtube.com/MinuteEarth TikTok | https://tiktok.com/@minuteearth Twitter | https://twitter.com/MinuteEarth Instagram | https://instagram.com/minute_earth Facebook | https://facebook.com/Minuteearth Website | https://minuteearth.com Apple Podcasts| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/minuteearth/id649211176 REFERENCES ************** Anderson, S. (2012). Languages, Species, and Biological Parallels. Oxford University Press Blog. https://blog.oup.com/2012/07/why-do-humans-talk-biology-language/ McWhorter, J. (2016). What’s a Language, Anyway?. The Atlantic. Retrieved from: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/difference-between-language-dialect/424704/ IUCN RedList. (2024). Summary Statistics. https://www.iucnredlist.org/resources/summary-statistics#Summary%20Tables Ritchie, H. (2022). How Many Species Are There? Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-species-are-there Eberhard, Dave. (2024). Personal Communication. Senior Linguistics Consultant for Ethnologue. https://www.sil.org/biography/david-m-eberhard Brown, E. (2018). Millennial Aboriginal Australians Have Developed Their Own Language. Atlas Obscura. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/light-warlpiri