Less than five percent of the 7,776 languages spoken globally are used online, says renowned linguist András Kornai – with the remaining 95 percent being left to wilt in the offline world.
The report “Digital Language Death” looked at a crawl of top level Web domains, and the vibrancy of Wikipedia language options as well as spell-check and language settings within operating systems and major websites (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.).
Today an endangered language is measured based on the projected number of speakers in 100 years. With more than 40 percent of world languages already endangered, according to the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity, the internet has a pivotal role yet to play.
